


Wicked At Midnight

by Randominity



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst and Humor, Blood Drinking, Blow Jobs, Character Turned Into Vampire, Face-Fucking, Hand Jobs, M/M, Masturbation, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Rimming, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:33:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Randominity/pseuds/Randominity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Louis is turned into a vampire, Nick is unhelpful, there's a rota, and everyone thinks things are going to go smoothly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wicked At Midnight

The first thing Louis becomes aware of as he regains consciousness is that Harry is angry. Harry is angry and yelling from somewhere in the house and Louis is momentarily impressed by his past self. He wishes he could remember what brilliant thing he did last night when they were drinking at the club, what sick prank he could have pulled that upset Harry enough to let himself into Louis' house just to be angry with him personally, but he can't. He can't remember much of anything. He was probably really very drunk.

"Just how drunk _were_ you, exactly?" Harry is asking angrily, and Louis just shrugs, his eyes still squeezed shut against the light relentlessly beaming over his eyelids. It's ridiculously bright, even for a hungover morning. He doesn't recall Harry coming in and drawing the curtains, but it sounds like a thing Harry would do, leaving him at the mercy of east-facing bedroom windows while he rants and raves. Seriously, whatever he did, he's hoping he at least got it on video.

Louis hears a lower rumble of a response, then, and it occurs to him that Harry's not actually talking to him. "How could you _not_ have known?" Harry goes on, getting louder, and then Louis hears the rumble loud and clear like he's rounded a corner, and recognises the other voice.

"Well, I _did_ obviously figure it out eventually," Nick Grimshaw says. "That's why he's here in the first place." He pauses. "More lush than I normally pull, innit?" he muses quietly, and Louis frowns and cracks one eye open, trying to see through the glare of light.

"Don't talk about him like that," Harry pouts, and Louis can barely make him out but he can well imagine him folding his arms sullenly. "You didn't notice until it was too late."

"You know, I _was_ thinking he tasted rather sweeter than I'm used to," Nick says. "But, you see, it was _dark_ , and he was. Pliant."

Louis hasn't tried out his voice yet, and he barely manages to croak out a "hey!" because he's fairly certain that was a jab, but he can hardly be blamed for not operating at top speed just now. The first question he'd planned to ask, namely what they were doing in his house, is apparently answered because as he grows accustomed to the light Louis can see that he's not in his own bedroom. It's not Harry's bedroom either. "What am I doing here?" he asks, where 'here' is apparently Nick's flat. His mouth is so dry he feels like he's speaking around wads of cotton. "What's happened?"

"Louis," Harry asks him in a very careful voice, precisely the kind of voice Louis would have appreciated Harry using in the first place with this strange hangover pulsing behind his eyes and the sunlight piercing into his skull. "Do you remember what went on last night?"

Louis winces and tries to sit up. "You know, I didn't even think I drank that much," he says, "but I can't remember a thing. Did I actually go home with Nick?" He can't even think of a recent occasion when he'd been blackout drunk, but as far as his memory goes, he was just having a few light drinks, enjoying the music and the warm press of bodies on the dance floor. He doesn't even really recall being that unsteady on his feet.

"Well," Nick tips his head from where he's standing in the doorway, arms crossed. "Technically, you _didn't_ come home with me, but it's not like it's such a hardship, I'll have you know."

Harry gnaws on his lip and fusses with his fringe a bit, shrugging. "You were sort of..." he waves his hands around. "Dancing. And Nick saw you from behind, and it was kind of--"

"I mistook you for someone else," Nick says. "It was all a terrible misunderstanding."

"Who'd you mistake me for?" Louis asks, then belatedly wonders if he's just set up a joke with The Wanted as a punchline or something.

"Nobody," is all Nick says, with a rueful quirk to his lips.

Louis presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth and it feels tacky, awful. He can barely swallow. "You know what-- I am _so_ hung over and thirsty right now, I'm afraid I will literally throw up in this bed," he says. "I mean, I'm sorry, but--" he shrugs, "I really don't understand what you're talking about, and to be honest, I don't care, so can I _please_ have something to drink before I embarrass myself?"

Harry comes over and kneels by him on the bed, folding his arms over the mattress and looking concerned, and Louis sort of wants to scream. He doesn't know whether Harry's putting on an act for Nick or if this is part of the torture or some twisted combination of the two, but he's already had enough. When he does throw up, Louis decides, he's going to make sure it's in Harry's hair.

"Louis," Harry says, still in that low, careful, fucking condescending voice, "what _exactly_ are you thirsty for?"

"Well, some water from the bloody tap would be just fine right now," Louis says. He presses his fingers to his temple, where there's a steady drum beating into the side of his brain. "Or, like--" he licks his lips and can't even manage to wet them, and the drum gets louder, just a bit faster. "If you've got any tea on, that would be--"

"Just water?" Harry says, reaching out to grip Louis' wrist, suddenly very tense. "Just tea?"

The drum skips a beat, then starts up again, faster, a quick, tantalising, syncopated rhythm inside Louis' head, and then Louis realises that the drum isn't causing the pain, and isn't coming from inside his head, either. Louis looks at Harry, watches him breathe as he stares at Louis, a bit wild-eyed, and Louis can see the quick pulse of Harry's carotid artery in the side of his neck.

The drum is Harry.

Louis frowns as he looks Harry over, takes a deep breath, and for a moment he's overwhelmed by his senses; the thrum of Harry's heart beating louder than anything, the steady rush of Harry's breathing, and-- the smell of him, suddenly powerfully earthy, fills Louis' head until he feels he can never get enough. He sways forward, pulled in by the strange, strong, comforting scent, the sweet rhythm, the healthy shade of red in Harry's lips. "You smell really, really good," he mumbles unthinkingly, gaze fixed on the visible throb in Harry's neck, and it's as though the words unstick something in Louis' throat, his mouth flooding with saliva and he isn't feeling at all sick anymore.

The base of Harry's throat hollows as he sucks in a breath, and then Harry says, "well, that's amazing," in a flat voice. "I've never seen anything like it."

"Here you go, love," Nick says from Louis' other side, pushing a mug into Louis' face, and he turns to it almost on instinct, his mouth dropping open in relief as he smells heaven. He takes the mug in both hands and drinks a swig gratefully from it, letting the liquid rush over his teeth and coat his throat, and he's never tasted anything so wonderful in his life, tangy and warm and thick and sweet and--

Louis tears his lips from the mug with a great deal of restraint to hold it out in front of him and peer inside. "What the hell is this?" he asks, eyeing the way the dark liquid swishes, viscous, against the sides of the mug, leaving sick, red stains in their wake. It's like no juice, no cocktail he's ever tried before, and it isn't even tea, which makes Louis wonder if Nick is possibly trying to kill him. It doesn't make him wonder enough to stop him from taking another large gulp and closing his eyes in bliss as it goes down smoothly. "It looks like somebody got murdered in here," he says, and he feels like his voice is actually starting to come back to him.

"Oh, he's good," Nick comments to Harry, nodding over Louis' head. "Got it in one," he tells Louis. "You're drinking murder. And enjoying it quite a lot, I might add."

"Stop teasing him," Harry says, and reaches out for Louis again. "You're drinking blood, Lou," he says gently.

Louis rolls his eyes over the mug full of-- god, it's like everything he can remember of hot chocolate and mulled wine and biting into toffee apples and rum after a night out ice skating except that it doesn't taste like any of those things. Louis isn't going to stick his tongue out and lick the sides of the mug when he's finished, but it's going to be very difficult not to. His mouth feels a bit strangely small around his teeth. "But it doesn't taste anything like--" he starts to say.

"Louis, you're a vampire now," Nick says.

"All right," Louis says, looking longingly at the dregs at the bottom of the mug. This is the weirdest hangover he's ever had. He vaguely remembers Nick pouring something vile into his mouth, now. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but obviously Nick and unlabelled beverages are not to be trusted. "Well, I appreciate you trying to be funny, but if you've quite finished--"

"I bit you in the night, Louis," Nick says, "and I drained half your blood before I realised who you were, so I sired you so that you wouldn't die--"

"What is _in_ this," Louis asks, sticking his finger in the mug and swirling it around the sides, which he thinks is slightly more dignified than doing it with his tongue. "I'll gladly listen to whatever rubbish you have to say if I can get another mug of this."

"Oh, for--" Nick scoffs, irritated, and in a swift movement, bites his own wrist, tearing it open with a flash of his teeth and drawing a slow trickle of blood. "Does this look like rubbish to you?" he snarls, thrusting his bared wrist at Louis.

"Nick!" Harry bellows, getting up off his knees and staggering as he launches himself a few feet back from the bed, the drum stuttering, going wildly out of sync.

"Jesus," Louis says, wide-eyed, but he's rapt instead of disgusted, hearing the soft whisper of blood hitting the duvet and soaking into the fabric, and he can't help but think, _how sad, what a waste_. "That's," he says, and sticks his finger in his mouth, scraping his teeth against the dregs he wiped from the mug. They're sharp against his skin and he pokes at one point with the tip of his finger. "Oh," he says. Stunned, he pulls his finger out of his mouth and presses the flat of his hand against his chest, where he's certain he would be able to feel his heart flutter at news like this, but there's nothing. It makes a sick sort of sense.

Harry stalks past the bed across the room, drum heart racing, and jabs a finger in Nick's chest. "You have to fix this," Harry hisses at him, but Nick looks slightly down at him and raises an eyebrow, and even Louis doesn't think Harry looks very intimidating in his sleeveless top, curls peeking out from under his beanie. "We go on tour in two days!"

"So I'm, like, actually dead?" Louis wonders aloud.

"Yes, yes," Nick tells Harry wryly. "I'll have to teach young Louis everything he needs to know about being a vampire before releasing him to the big, bad world." He sits down on the bed and puts his hand on Louis' knee, feigning concern. "You're a vampire, love. You're going to have to drink blood to live, from now on." He pats Louis' knee and gets back up. "There we go; that should do it."

"Yeah," Louis says. "That was a great help, cheers. So I'm not actually dead."

Nick pauses in thought. "Technically, you've already died," he says. "I'd put time of death at..." he puffs his cheeks and blows out the air through his lips like a deflating balloon. "Half-two this morning?"

"Because you _killed_ me," Louis points out. "So I'm undead," he suggests. "Or is that more of a zombie thing?" He doesn't remember properly what all of the names are supposed to apply to. His heart isn't beating and he's just drunk a mug of blood and he should be disgusted at the thought that that will be all he drinks for the rest of his life, but he's not; right now it's the most enticing prospect he's ever considered.

Harry looks between the two of them helplessly. "Louis?" he asks. "You're taking this awfully well," he says, uncertain.

"You've also technically died, at some point," Louis says to Nick, sitting up properly. "Oh, my god," he says, seeing Nick for the first time with new eyes. "I mean, I always thought you looked older than you said you were, but how old _are_ you, exactly?"

Nick actually looks affronted at that. "Excuse yourself," he says. "I'm two hundred and seventy-three, for your information, and you can just shut it! Let's hear how you like it when people are asking you where your grandchildren are."

Louis raises his eyebrows. "Generally, people think I look younger than my age, actually," he tells Nick.

"Not with that hairline, they don't," Nick says, with a flash of his teeth.

"Your crow's feet have crow's feet," Louis shoots back, just to be unkind. "You'd think if you were staying out of the sun all the time you'd look a bit more--" he gasps as he realises, clapping a hand over his mouth. "I can't go out in the sun anymore, can I?" he says, through his fingers. "But I _love_ the sun." He drops his hand and glares at Nick, angrier now than ever. "This is so unfair! I wish you'd just killed me."

"You really don't, Lou," Harry tells him, shaking his head with his lips pursed. "It's ugly. I've seen it."

"Oh, stop," Nick rolls his eyes. "You can still go out in the sun; it won't kill you. Well," he shrugs, "I mean, it _will_ kill you, just not in small doses. In and out, here to there. No outdoor arenas in the afternoon might be a good plan."

"I look awful without a tan," Louis complains, and brushes his fingers through his hair, making sure to smooth it down so it flops over his hairline. "All peaky and ill."

"By all means," Nick says, "feel free to go wild with the bronzer and tanning spray. Be as orange as you like, if it's that important to you." 

Louis looks down into the mug again, acutely aware that Nick hasn't brought him a refill, acutely aware that the only heart he can hear beating in the room is Harry's. Nick smells like he did before, the way he always does, of his cologne and the wax in his quiff and since it's morning, the lingering scent of his aftershave. It's Harry who smells strong, Harry who smells of life and spice and things Louis can't remember having tasted until just now. "How much," he asks in a low voice, waving the mug a bit, "like, how often will I need to..." he doesn't quite know how to say it. _Drink from people_ , or _feed_ , or _have a mug of blood_.

"Maybe once a week," Harry says.

"Pretty much every day," Nick says over him.

Harry draws back in horror, gaping. "But you _told_ me," he says to Nick, "you said--"

"I didn't want you to freak out, young Harold," Nick says, with a gentle smile, and Louis is stunned speechless, watching Nick comfort his best friend about the fact that Louis is officially some sort of monster. He wants to comfort Harry himself, but he hasn't any idea how, because he doesn't even know what he is, or what he needs. He can't even say he feels the same, that he's the same Louis somewhere where it counts, because if he were, his heart would be pounding and he'd be able to think of something other than what it might feel like to lick blood from a wound in the side of Harry's neck, how to best do it without hurting him.

"It's ugly business out there, being a vampire," Nick says. "I wouldn't expect you to understand, but Louis deserves the truth." He sits back down on the bed and leans into Louis' space. "You'll only need to feed from a live human being once every week or so," he says softly. "In the meantime, butcher's blood is fine, or plasma from blood banks for short durations. You'll need it every day, just not from a person. All right?"

Louis nods numbly, still staring down into the mug. "So who do I-- how do you--"

"Mostly friends," Nick tells him. "I have a few who volunteer." Louis glances up at Harry, who straightens and shakes his head.

"No," he says. "I haven't. I mean, I _knew_ about Nick, but I haven't."

"It's not so often that it hurts anyone, anyway," Nick goes on. "But there are other times," he chuckles a bit, drawing Louis' gaze, "when I pick out a nice, luscious, random body from the crowd at a club and plan for a feast."

"And they turn out to be me," Louis concludes.

"And they turn out _not_ to be random," Nick agrees. "So don't make my mistake, there. Keep it to your friends if you can, and if you absolutely _can't_ ," he shrugs, "be discreet, at least? Seedy clubs, dark alleyways, the sorts of things your mum always warned you about. There are things that go bump in the night, and all that."

**

It takes another mug of blood and Harry's reassurance that he doesn't actually look like he's just crawled out of a crypt before Louis feels fit enough to get out of bed and go home. In Harry's tinted Range Rover, Harry keeps shooting him concerned glances until Louis finally snaps.

"What, Harry?" he says. " _What_? Are you waiting for me to burst into tears, or flames, or something? Does this have to be weird between us now?"

"I was just wondering how you were feeling," Harry says. "Like, how you're handling all this."

Louis looks out the window and shrugs, shaking his head. "I feel-- I feel like I'm _normal_ ," he says simply. "I mean, it doesn't make any sense, but I put my hand over my heart and I know I don't have a heartbeat, and that should probably freak me out, or scare me. But how often do you think about your heartbeat, really? How often do you think about whether or not you're breathing?" He glances back at Harry. "I can hear _your_ heart beating," he says. "And I can smell you from here."

"Hey," Harry says in protest. "I don't smell bad, do I?"

"You just smell like you," Louis tells him. "Like you're alive and you're healthy and." He bites his lip. "It just feels like that's what's supposed to happen," he explains. "It was weird at first, but now it just is what it is. I reckon it's meant to make the transition easier, do you think? Like that's why vampires are still just a myth, and we don't hear about new vampires going into shock and killing their families out of despair or something. It'd be bad publicity, wouldn't it?"

"You could look at it that way," Harry says, eyes on the road but fighting a smile. "At least now you'll get to stay twenty-one forever."

Louis groans and throws his head back against the seat. "Ugh," he says. "If only this happened when I was nineteen! Nineteen was such a good year." He rolls his head to the side and sticks his bottom lip out at Harry until Harry looks over to acknowledge him and laugh. "So." He gives Harry a tight-lipped smile. " _Is_ it gonna be weird between us?"

"If I can be normal friends with Nick, I don't see why I can't do it with you," Harry tells him.

"But you didn't know Nick before he was a vampire," Louis reminds him.

"Nick also never told me he could smell me," Harry admits. "That makes me trust you more already." He glances over and gives Louis a winning smile. "Were you really gonna bite me, back there? Before Nick came over with the mug?"

Louis thinks back on it, and he genuinely isn't sure. He hadn't even known yet what he was, what he wanted, could barely think straight. He doesn't know if he'd even have known what to do, how to go about biting; he still doesn't, in actual fact. "Somehow I think it wouldn't have been that easy," he says. "You did smell amazing, though. I've never felt anything like it."

"Nick says it can get intense when you're really, really starved for it," Harry nods.

"Oh, is that why he had his way with me in the club?" Louis asks. "And, apparently, the alleyway outside the club?"

"It wasn't so much you he had his way with," Harry says, "as your jugular vein. I think he's not really into, um, like, the people he sleeps with and the people he bites are sort of different."

"Well, that's good to know," Louis says. "I'd bite Nick if I could."

"Are you okay with it?" Harry shoots him a look. "That you'll have to bite people? The band, really?"

Louis shrugs again. It's not something he can imagine, but what of this morning has been, so far? "I reckon I'll just have to get used to it, won't I?" He starts to chew on a fingernail, and as he spits out a sliver, he wonders if it will actually grow back this time, if he'll ever have to shave or cut his hair again. "I should tell the other boys quickly," he says from around the nail. "I'm trying to think how to break it to them." He holds a hand up in the air. "'Boys,'" he intones, "'I'm a vampire.' No. 'Guess what, lads? I've been turned into a creature of the night.' That is... probably too close to sounding like prostitution. 'Boys, I'm afraid Nick gave me a communicable disease.'"

Harry gives him a warning glare. "Louis," he says.

"Well, it is, isn't it?" Louis sighs. 

**

 **Louis:** _Hey Nick how do you go about biting people? Is there anything special I need to do or what ??_

 **Louis:** _And where can I bite them ?? I think the neck won't work for the boys._

**

"What if," Louis begins slowly, "I told you that Nick Grimshaw was a vampire?"

"I'd think that's not very nice, Louis," Liam says, settling down on the arm of the sofa in the studio's Writing Room where Louis' already sitting. "Nick's perfectly famous in his own right."

Louis frowns at him. "No," he says. "No, I'm talking about an _actual_ vampire. Blood, fangs, death vampire."

"Vampires aren't real," Liam says at once. "And don't make me argue with you about this one, Louis, because just because there's a Wikipedia entry on it doesn't make it true."

"But what if they _were_ ," Louis presses him. "What if they _are_? What if Nick _is_?"

"Even if they _were_ real, it's not like we'd have any way of knowing, apart from rumours," Niall points out. "It's not like Nick's gone round biting anybody."

Louis raises his hand. "Until now, actually," he says. He waves.

"What?" Niall says.

"Nick kind of," Harry gestures, "bit Louis in the night, and turned him into a vampire."

"I'm dead," Louis tells them. He's settled on 'dead', he's decided. 'Undead' is such an ugly word.

"You're not," Zayn says. "You're walking around and you look perfectly healthy."

"I am _now_ ," Louis says, "but I _was_ dead. And now I don't have a heartbeat."

"This is silly," Liam announces. "We can all play along for a while, or you can tell us now that you're having us on, Louis; your choice."

"He really doesn't have a heartbeat, guys," Harry says.

"Come feel my heart," Louis insists, patting the sofa next to him, opening his arms wide when Liam sighs and slides off the arm and over the cushions to meet him. He takes Liam's hand and presses it to his chest and Liam lets him, for a few seconds, before wiggling his hand out of Louis' and trying to find the heartbeat himself. After another moment or two, he frowns.

"I've seen tricks like this, though," Liam says. "You can take things to suppress your heartrate, or, or, you could have one of those little tubes under your arm--"

"Do you really think I'd go that far for a prank, mate?" Louis asks, but they both know he probably would. "I'm not breathing, either," he adds.

"That's even easier to fake," Niall says. "You should go stand outside in the sun," he suggests. "Let's see if you turn into ash or sparkle or something."

"Niall," Louis says in disbelief, "that's not a test, that's actual suicide. Nobody sparkles in the sun, all right?"

Harry blurts, "he hasn't got a reflection," and they all turn to him.

Louis clicks his fingers and points at Harry excitedly. "Yes," he says, "exactly, thank you, Harry. I haven't got a reflection, there we go."

"That's not possible," Zayn says. "You can't just pull out a compact or something that shows you from some weird angle where we can't see you and expect us to believe it."

"Well, there's a mirror right by the door," Louis says, grabbing Liam's hand and tugging him up with it, catching him with a hand to the chest when Liam stumbles into him. "Everyone come with me."

"It's like a little field trip of deception," Liam says, but everyone crosses the room with him until they're stood before the mirror in the shadow of the corridor. Louis reaches behind him to flip on the other lights, and watches the others gape.

"You must be joking," Zayn says, putting his hands on Louis' shoulders, and then sliding them down the sides of his arms, watching their reflection move in mid-air in the mirror.

"That is just-- that's incredible, that's--" Liam puts his fist to his mouth and shakes his head.

Niall looks carefully at Louis and places his hands on either side of Louis' face, then turns to see their placement in the mirror, biting his lip hard. He kisses Louis on the cheek by his thumb, watching himself lean in toward nothing. "I don't like it," he declares, frowning. "It's like you're not even there."

"But I'm right here, Niall," Louis says. "I think it's the lack of a soul. Souls and mirrors, it's a thing, apparently."

"Is it really?" Liam asks.

"I think I read it on Wikipedia," Louis says, shrugging.

"You're still you, though, yeah?" Zayn says, hand still on Louis' bicep, squeezing as though to make sure he's not gone anywhere. "You're still Louis; you're not, like, evil now, or whatever."

"Of course not," Louis tells him. "I mean, no more than I was before, anyway, right?" He grins and pats Zayn on the side of his face. "Do I seem that different to you?"

"You've been acting as usual around us," Liam says, "but tell me: how do you feel about babies, now?"

Louis shrugs. "Still love 'em," he says earnestly.

"Puppies?" Liam squints at him.

"Adorable," Louis says.

"What about kittens?"

Louis cringes. "A bit dodgy," he admits, "but--" he points-- "to be fair, I felt that way from the start."

"You still love your mum, of course," Niall prompts him, and Louis lets his shoulders sag, pulling his lip between his teeth. He nods, and there's a tightness around his heart that surprises even him, since he doesn't have a heart that beats anymore.

"I don't know what I'm even gonna tell her," he admits softly.

"Are you afraid she might try to, you know," Niall says gently, making a small stabbing gesture, "stake you or something?" and Louis stares at him, appalled.

"Why would that _ever_ be okay, Niall?" he asks. "Why would you-- _no_ ," he shakes his head. "I _was_ thinking she might be _worried_ because this is a _dangerous life_ I'm in now, or sad because I died, and now I'm gonna end up outliving everyone I care about."

"Oh, yeah, that is really sad," Niall agrees, pulling him into a hug Louis only stiffly returns because _Jesus_ , the thought of his mum being scared of him-- "are you sad about it, Louis?" Niall asks.

"I'm pretty upset about a lot of things right now, actually," Louis says. Zayn rubs his hand back up to Louis' shoulder and squeezes him there, making sympathetic eyes at him, but Louis can't let it go now. "Would you really think Maura would _stake_ you?" he asks. "Would any of you even think that?"

"Well, I don't know," Niall says, shrugging. "I know she loves me, but," he makes a face. "I don't think she'd mess about when it came to demons."

"I'm not a demon!" Louis shouts.

"Of course you're not," Zayn says soothingly, shaking Louis' shoulder gently. "He doesn't mean _actual_ demons."

"I don't even believe in demons," Niall assures him. "Unless-- I mean, you wouldn't know, would you?"

"I-- I don't think there's, like, a network or anything," Louis says helplessly, and lets Niall push his face into the side of his neck. It seems a rather more trusting gesture now, given the circumstances. "I can't even get Nick to answer my texts."

"So you actually have to drink blood now," Liam muses, nodding. "That's got to be pretty intense."

"It is," Louis agrees.

"Have you had to, you know," Zayn says. "Bite a person in the neck, that whole deal?"

"I haven't got it from a person yet," Louis says. "I'm not quite sure how I'm meant to go about it."

"Well, I've already as good as volunteered," Harry says. "I already know it's not all that bad, and you're gonna need it, so when you figure it out you can drink from me, I'm fine with it."

"Absolutely," Niall says. "Me too, whatever you need."

"I don't think any of us are gonna say no, are we?" Zayn says, raising his hand to squeeze the back of Louis' neck. "We're here for you, bro."

"Well, that puts me in an awkward position," Liam says, but he's grinning, eyes crinkled as he comes up close, arms outstretched. Louis pinches him on the nipple and then evades the hand Liam lifts to grab at him with. Liam stills, with his hand still closed in mid-air. "You've got quicker," he says, frowning slightly. "Stronger, too, I'm starting to notice."

Louis raises his eyebrows, staring down at his own hand. "Looks like I have," he agrees, and darts in for another quick squeeze of Liam's nipple that he's powerless to avoid.

**

"Do you remember," Paul says, "when I started with you, and I said my team would support you boys in whatever you did as long as you gave an effort to be safe and responsible?"

"Yes, of course," Liam says, nodding with the rest of them.

"And we always made sure you had condoms and first aid and your phones and a lift readily available so you would never have to make a risky decision in the heat of the moment?"

"We're very grateful," Louis says.

"I'm not sure even we can get in the business of covering up the bodies of people dead from blood loss, boys," Paul says.

"I'd just like to say, I don't actually have to kill anyone," Louis points out, raising his hand. "That is absolutely not a thing you'd ever have to do."

"I'm not so sure we can cover up the bodies of people unconscious from blood loss, either," Paul says.

Louis winces, because this was a thing Nick had very specifically mentioned was a possibility. He wants to give an accurate picture of the kind of risks he might pose. "That's-- you... shouldn't... have to do that," he says cautiously. "I'm-- I plan to be really very careful."

Paul stares at him for a long moment, stern-faced in that way Louis knows is meant to make him squirm but very rarely succeeds, because as long as he still hasn't actually killed a man, Paul will be at the very worst bemused by whatever Louis' got up to. "How often do you think you'll need our help," he asks finally, and Louis slouches in relief, blows a breath out through his lips out of habit.

"I only need to feed from someone live once a week," he says, "and the boys have already graciously volunteered for that."

"Have they, now?" Paul raises his eyebrows.

"It's totally safe," Harry says. "Nick drinks from his friends all the time, and they're fine."

"This is the same Nick that turned Louis into a vampire," Paul says, tilting his head pointedly.

"But Louis was supposed to be a random--" Harry shuts his mouth and puts his hand over it. "Yes," he says, from behind his fingers.

"I promise not to turn Harry into a vampire," Louis tells Paul, "and I promise not to bite any strangers. But for everyday I just need butcher's blood or plasma from blood banks, so--"

"All right," Paul folds his arms. "I can co-ordinate that, that's fine. Any preferences?"

"I--" Louis looks around at the boys. "I know there's not exactly butchers on every corner, but-- I'd feel kind of bad taking plasma from people who really need it, you know?"

"You're kind of one of those people now, Lou," Harry points out.

"Yes, but--" _they need it to live_ isn't exactly what he means to say, because so does he, but he's not even strictly alive, not the way people in hospital need to be. "I have other options, and they don't," he says. "I realise that'll make it harder, but I'd feel a lot better about it."

"And all the legends say you don't have a soul," Liam grins, reaching out to punch Louis in the arm.

"What's your current arrangement? How are you managing now?" Paul wants to know, and Louis holds up the sports bottle he's been nursing all day.

"I've got enough to last me a few more days," he says, "or at least until we get out of the UK, so I'm good for now; I'm just going to need a steady supply from then on."

"Wait, hold on," Niall says, grabbing Louis' wrist. "Are you drinking blood out of a sports bottle?"

"Yeah, why?" Louis says, and squirts the bottle deep into his mouth to show them how it's normal, how it's not like creepy music plays and his eyes go all yellow and his fangs start dripping menacingly everywhere. It's just... it's just how he drinks, now, like eating a bag of crisps and enjoying a cuppa.

"You've been drinking from it all day!" Niall says accusingly. "I thought it was just water! I could've drunk from that!"

Louis shrugs and pushes the tip shut. "You would've found out how wrong you were in a second, mate," he says.

"That is not all right," Niall says, shaking his head. "We share our things in this group and you're gonna have to label yours, pal."

Louis grins at that. "All right, pal," he says. "Maybe I'll start labelling my drinking containers, or maybe I'll just let you keep guessing."

"You wouldn't," Niall says, calling his bluff.

"He wouldn't," Zayn assures Niall.

"Would you?" Liam says.

"You know," Louis says thoughtfully, "if it was anything other than blood, I actually really would. But if Niall ended up spitting it out somewhere, it'd just be such a waste, you know?"

"That's disgusting," Niall says.

Louis shrugs. "You wouldn't wanna waste _your_ food."

"Fair point," Niall says. "I take it back."

**

 **Louis:** _Grimshaw please this is not a joke_

 **Louis:** _If I starve to death because I don't know what to do I promise to haunt you_

 

 **Nick:** _Quite a threat from a vampire who doesn't know how to drink blood. I'm sure you'd make a stellar ghost._

 **Nick:** _Best spots to drink from are: neck, wrist, inner thigh_

 **Nick:** _You'll know what to do when you get there. It's an instinct._

 

 **Louis:** _INNER THIGH !??_

 **Nick:** _It's the best one of the lot. There's an artery going straight up to the heart in the groin._

 **Louis:** _Did you bite me on the inner thigh Nick ??_

 

He doesn't bother to wait and see if Nick will reply, tossing his phone down on the bed and stripping off on his way to the toilet. He's got roughly a hundred pictures on his phone of segments of his neck as he surreptitiously tried to properly photograph the puncture marks Harry described, until Harry snatched the phone from him and called him a twat for not just asking him to take the picture for him. The skin there is dead, tiny dark marks not even scabbed over; someone would have to be looking very closely to spot them, not to think they're blemishes or moles, and Louis wonders if they'll ever heal, if that's the one thing that Louis will carry with him forever from his human life.

Under the bright fluorescence of the lights in the toilet, Louis pokes at his inner thighs, stretches the skin taut and smooths over the fine hair to see if there's anything similar, tiny dots to indicate where Nick drained his life's blood while he lost all memory of it. He doesn't find anything, not even in the crease between hip and thigh, and he sinks back against the counter, scrubbing at his face with his hands in relief.

 

 **Louis:** _thanks for not biting me on the inner thigh Grimshaw_

 

 **Nick:** _It was the hardest thing I've ever passed up on, Tomlinson._

**

"I feel like I'm here for a medical check-up or something," Louis comments, shoving his hands in the pockets of his hoodie as he steps around Harry and into his room. "It's weird, isn't it? Me nervous like I'm here for a jab, when you're the one who's going to be bitten?"

"To be fair, I've been around this more than you," Harry says, following Louis to the bed. "I don't suppose you even know what to expect."

Louis wrinkles his nose and curls his lip. "Nick said 'I would know'," he says, pulling his hands free to make quotes with his fingers in the air. "He said 'it's like an instinct'. He said a lot of shit, followed by a load of rubbish." He sits down on the edge of Harry's bed. "Should we do this first to get it out of the way, or," he shrugs, "did you want to pretend things are normal for a while?"

Harry grins at him. "I don't suppose you'd be much good at FIFA if all you're thinking about is getting a bite in," he says, "so we might as well get started."

"I'm never too distracted for FIFA," Louis says, taking Harry's lead and climbing down the length of the bed to grab at the controllers.

"We'll see about that," Harry says. "I can't have you playing crap and making me carry you."

Louis ignores him, having already got down off the bed, and examines the contents of Harry's minibar. "Do you think if _you_ drank, and then _I_ drank from _you_ , I could get a bit tipsy?"

"I'm pretty sure Nick's done that before," Harry says thoughtfully.

"Sick," Louis says, handing a small bottle of spirits back to him over his shoulder. "All right-- you drink, let's play."

Louis isn't strictly on top of his game, missing passes and blaming the controller while sneaking glances at the way Harry holds his, wrists flexing, the tendons in his wrists drawing dangerous attention to the points Louis wants most to taste. Harry catches him looking once or twice, but after Louis squawks and pushes him down, punching him in the side of the arm until he whines, he doesn't say anything. They beat the computer anyway, Harry down three bottles of spirits and one of water when they're finished, and Louis' teeth are itching, the back of his throat dry.

"Right," he says, throwing down his controller and uncrossing his legs, getting to his knees. "I think-- we should do this, now."

"Yeah," Harry agrees, rolling over and climbing back up onto his bed. "Is here good?"

"Yeah," Louis nods. "Yeah, in case, like, I don't know if you'll get woozy, or--"

"Well, I _have_ been drinking," Harry says.

"Yeah, but I don't know if--" Louis bites his lip. He doesn't know anything. The entire premise is ridiculous to him, of laying Harry out and biting him like it's ordinary, but he can't put it off any longer. "I think you should be lying down," he says, and sits down next to Harry as he does. "Did Nick tell you where are the good places I should bite?"

Harry nods. "He always says either the neck or the wrist, and we can't do the neck, so." He holds up his left hand. "I reckon I can wear a watch on this one. It's a bit less suspicious, I think."

"Is that it?" Louis asks him, tense, watching the thin stretch of skin over Harry's inner wrist. He can see the blue tinge of Harry's veins and hear the soft thrum of his pulse. "Is that all Nick said?"

"Yeah, did he not tell you?" Harry asks, and Louis doesn't answer, just takes Harry's wrist in his hand. He wonders if there are things he will want keep from Harry, the way Nick does; if there are things that shouldn't be shared because they're scary, like the fact that he has to drink every day or the fact that there's an artery in the groin that's best for feeding. He wonders if he should tell Harry what Harry smells like right now, the way Louis can hear the rush of his blood as well as feel it beneath his fingers as he traces the spidery blue lines. Harry's skin is so, so thin and warm and all Louis wants right now is to _break it_.

"I'm really sorry," he murmurs. "But I think I'm about to make it weird," and he lifts Harry's hand and shoves the side of Harry's wrist into his mouth. His mouth is watering and he rasps his tongue along Harry's skin, seeking the soft pulse point where everything wonderful about Harry is stored. He can hear Harry's sharp intake of air, then a huff of breath as he squirms in Louis' periphery, and he realises it must tickle, must feel strange having your best mate lick your wrist like they're trying to memorise the taste of it.

There's a long, increasingly awkward moment where Louis waits for something to click into place, for a sign or for Harry's veins to start singing to him or something, to give him guidance. It's obvious that biting in this case is supposed to be different from the way he would do ordinarily, the nips and nibbles he gives to bruise the boys when he's playing around, and it's not like he wants to tear a chunk of Harry's flesh away, but he still hasn't got fangs and he doesn't know how to bring them out. He's drooling, literally drooling with his mouth around Harry's wrist because he's so close he can practically taste it, and he feels like a child, like a toothing infant gnawing uselessly on a dummy, and he can't stop.

"Um," Harry says mildly, and reaches out to pet Louis over his hair with his right hand, and somehow that makes it all worse; Louis gives a frustrated grunt and knocks Harry's hand away. "It's all right," Harry says. "I think you're meant to--"

Louis' vision goes cloudy around the edges, and suddenly Harry's voice seems very far away, underwater and distorted while the thump of his pulse fills Louis' senses. He feels it, then, under the tip of his tongue, the steady beat of it and the narrow line where the blood rushes under the surface of Harry's skin, and Louis shudders, jaw widening as his fangs push out right where Louis knows, just _knows_ , that they are perfectly placed. He squeezes his eyes shut and bites down, feels the soft give of Harry's skin and the push back of Harry's pain response, and then the wonderful, life-giving taste of Harry rushes over his teeth and over his tongue, tinged with brandy; he laps at it, swallowing quickly and greedily, clutching at Harry's hand and forearm as he drinks.

"You're supposed to," Harry is saying breathlessly, "Nick says, for a count of, of twenty," and Louis thinks Nick said nothing of the sort to him, but faintly begins to count anyway, thinks, _seven, eight_ , and his eyes roll up into his head. "Oh, my god, Louis, this really throbs," Harry mutters, and Louis wipes at the spit on his chin with the back of his hand and keeps going, feels tight in his own skin, feels like he's turned on without actually being hard. He rocks up on his knees and over Harry, bending down and lowering Harry's hand below his heart, willing the blood to flow to him, to fill him up and make him... he doesn't know. Better, stronger, lighter, more alive.

Harry's fingers start to curl in toward his palm, the tips brushing Louis' hand, and Louis can feel, now, how there's a loss of warmth there, that they're going cold. "Count of twenty, Lou," Harry says, "count of twenty," but if his voice was faint to Louis' ears before it's positively thready now, and the beat of his pulse is stuttering, not quite the steady rush of before. Louis can't remember when he last counted, but he senses the shift, thinks _this is how people die, isn't it_ , and keeps his eyes closed, lifting his fangs out of Harry with a slick sound and licking over them for one last taste. He lets go of Harry's arm and Harry tugs it close to his chest, raising his wrist to his shoulder and holding it up with his right hand.

"Sorry," Louis blurts. "Sorry, I--"

"I'm all right," Harry tells him, but he looks a bit pale in the face, a bit stunned, glassy-eyed. "I'm fine." His eyelids flutter and he swallows hard, but he doesn't pass out or anything, even when Louis feels his forehead for temperature, touches his skin to see if he's gone clammy.

"I should stay with you," Louis goes on. "I should-- um," he looks around and then prods at his fangs with his fingers, self-conscious. "I promise I won't eat you if you fall asleep, yeah?"

Harry gives him a small smile. "I think I trust you enough to fall asleep, Lou." He nods at him. "You look--" he shrugs. "You've got, like, cat eyes."

"Have I?" Louis asks. His phone is across the room or he'd try to take a picture. Best Hallowe'en costume ever. "Do I look scary?"

"They're not yellow or anything, but they've gone slitted," Harry tells Louis. He closes his eyes. "That wasn't too bad," he says.

"Yeah, I'll-- I plan on getting better," Louis says. "Practice and all."

"How do _you_ feel," Harry asks him, eyes still closed. "You seemed to really like it."

"I'm buzzing," Louis replies. "Not tipsy at all. I just don't know how I'm going to get back to looking normal again."

"You should ask Nick," Harry says. He's fading fast. "He goes in and out really quick."

"Yeah?" Louis says, poking at the point of one fang absently with his tongue. He gets up and retrieves his phone, then returns to Harry and takes a look at Harry's limp wrist, turning it over to examine the damage. The marks are definitely there, still welling slightly, but there's only one small trickle of blood trailing up the inside of Harry's forearm. Louis licks his thumb and drags it over the trail, swiping it quickly over his tongue and then placing Harry's wrist back on his chest.

He stares at Harry for a long while, watching him breathe and listening to his heart stop working quite so hard to fix whatever it is in him that Louis disrupted; then he flees back to his own room.

**

 **Louis:** _What the fuck just happened ?? I sucked Harry's blood and I thought I was going to kill him !!_

 

 **Nick:** _Well, you'll learn to control that._

 **Louis:** _You could have warned me!_

 **Nick:** _He's your friend. You weren't really in danger of hurting him unless you did something stupid like not drink all day. You didn't do that, did you? Of course not. You're fine._

 

 **Louis:** _How do I get my fangs to go back in though? Right now it's like waiting to lose a stiffy_

 **Nick:** _That's pretty much accurate, innit? You're like a teenager who's just discovered his prick. Oh, bless._

 

 **Louis:** _I can't believe how unhelpful your being._

 **Nick:** _You are*_

 **Louis:** _I hate you_

**

There are benefits to Louis' new dead life on tour, he finds. He has no problem turning down Haribo sweets at the end of the day, though it's less an improvement on his willpower and more that sweets simply don't appeal the way they used to, but he's grateful for the change in his routine at any rate. There is a part of him that wonders if weight gain is truly a thing of the past or if there's such a thing as high-calorie types of blood; he'll have to ask Nick about it at some point.

No longer relying on air to breathe means Louis can be as energetic as he likes when they perform without an impact to his vocals, without a worry as to proper support, whether he's running down the ramp to drape an arm around Zayn's shoulders or chasing Liam from one end of the stage to the other. No longer having body temperature to regulate means he can give his jacket to Zayn when he goes outside for a fag, or have a cuddle with Niall without complaining that Niall runs too hot - though he will always complain that Niall runs too hot; the lad is a furnace - or drink blood at any time of the day whether his bottle's been sitting in the sun or chilled in the corner. 

It's no different in so many small ways, and when it's not it's often easier. He no longer needs to nap during short breaks in their promo and rehearsals, instead sitting back with bottles silently accepted from Paul, helpfully labelled with messages like _"Louis has mono - do not touch!"_ He gives Lou apologetic smiles as she dusts his face with bronzer, blends colour into his cheeks with her fingers. He stands under umbrellas and pulls his hoodie over his head while posing for pictures with fans under the sun, and it all starts to feel normal. It almost feels like living, and so he forgets.

"There's a word for that, isn't there," Louis says from the floor in front of Liam's bed as they watch a DVD. "To describe two consonants next to each other that only make one sound. Django," he says, slowly. "Duh-Jannngooohhh."

"Diphthong?" Harry suggests, tipping his head back.

"No," Zayn says, "that's for vowels. And it's not whatever word you're thinking, anyway, Louis, because the D in this is silent."

"Still one sound," Louis says.

"Only one sound because it's only the J," Zayn says. "It's not like the two of them combined makes a new sound."

"I think you just don't know the word," Louis says. "I can't think of it, meself; I'm really knackered. Liam, I'm coming up; make room."

"I thought you didn't need bed," Liam says, but shifts anyway as Louis drags himself up beside him. "I thought you were too good for bed."

"Where's your drink?" Niall asks, and Louis holds the bottle up, labelled _"Louis has tonsillitis - do not touch!"_. It's strangely heavy, even as he puts it to his mouth and takes a swig, and it's nearly empty already though it was supposed to last him until morning.

"I've been drinking," he says, "but I'm just sleepy." He lets himself fall forward and presses his face into Liam's chest. Liam smells fantastic, like the memory of ash from a campfire and the familiar smells of a footie match. His heart beats more slowly and deeply than Harry's, and Louis' eyes close as he breathes him in. "Put me to bed, Li," he mumbles into Liam's shirt, and whines when Liam pushes him back by the shoulders and tips his face to the light, forcing his eyes open with his fingers.

"Louis," he says sharply. "Louis, are you blacking out?"

"What's happening?" Louis hears Harry say, suddenly sounding very close and anxious.

"He's not supposed to be like this, is he?" Liam says. "He's been drinking all day, like he said. Stop the film," he adds, over his shoulder. "His eyes have gone all--"

"Oh, my god, I think I know," Harry says. "Louis, when was the last time you bit someone?"

It's always the hard questions with Harry, Louis thinks. It's always _do you remember what happened last night, what are you thirsty for, when did you last bite someone_. "It was you," he says, and he thinks he ought to be bothered by the way he slurs it. "I got a lot, didn't I? Supposed to last a while."

"Louis, that was _nine days_ ago!" Harry cries, and Louis' eyes open to see Harry push Liam's hands away and grab Louis' shoulders himself to give Louis a shake. "This isn't just like skipping breakfast, Lou," he says urgently. "You might be weak for now, but you're stronger than all of us, all right? If you starve, you could go into a bloodlust and kill us all."

"I would never," Louis starts to say, but Liam is stripping off his top and helping Harry to lower Louis on his back.

"I should do it this time," Liam is saying, kneeling over him, "it's my fault. I set the rota, I should've known," as Louis pets him clumsily on the arm; good old Liam, good old reliable, delicious Liam whose heart must be so powerful Louis bets he won't even have to suck once he gets his fangs into him. "What do I need to do," Liam asks, his voice already fading into the background, offering Louis his left wrist. "Does he need anything to get started?"

"You just need to wait," Harry says from very far away, and Louis thinks, _not even that_ , as his eyes roll back and his fangs descend to sink into the soft flesh of Liam's wrist. There's so much of it at once, a flood of it, so much warmth and the tang of ash and Liam's pulse, so strong in Louis' ears. Blood flows quickly down Louis' throat and he can't even choke on it, will never be too full of it; his eyes water with the beauty of it and he grips Liam's arm tight in his hands, tighter when Liam tries to flex his wrist a bit.

"Oh, my god," Louis hears Zayn say. "I don't think I can watch this. The thought of all that blood is making me squeamish. He's really drinking it down, isn't he?"

"Count of twenty, Lou," Harry tells him gently, stroking his hair back, and Louis closes his eyes again, doesn't know what fucking number he's on, hasn't counted at all, because fuck, _fuck_ , _Liam_ , the _taste_ of him, he tastes so-- Louis _needs_ to--

"Is that what it is?" Liam asks faintly, pulse skipping. "Is he meant to stop now?"

"Louis," Harry says again, and Louis digs his fingers in to Liam's forearm, just once, like he can force a bit more blood out down the length of Liam's arm; then he makes himself let go, pulls out his fangs and shoves Liam away, turning over onto his stomach and crawling farther up the bed.

He rests his forehead against the duvet and hides his face in his arms as he licks the blood from his teeth, still feeling weak, yet aware enough now to be embarrassed that he let himself go like that, that he let them see so much. "Sorry," he says. "Sorry, I'm-- it's not supposed to be like that, I'm sorry." All he can think is that this is the precise sort of "something stupid" Nick had warned him about, in his way.

"Are you all right now?" Zayn asks him, and Louis feels him settle on the bed next to him, Harry bracketing him in on the other side. "Liam's fine--"

"I'm really fine!" Liam shouts weakly.

"He's just a bit dizzy, but-- you gonna be okay?" Zayn says, putting a hand on Louis' back, while Louis rubs his forehead against the duvet in the circle of his arms and wishes his fangs would just, please, please, go in.

"You need to let us know if you still have to drink some more," Harry tells him. "It's been over a week for me, so I can probably--"

"No, I can," Zayn volunteers. "If he needs it, I can do it."

"I thought you just finished saying you were squeamish," Niall says, from somewhere behind them.

"I'm not squeamish if it's my own blood," Zayn argues. "We have a rota, yeah? I'm next. I can do it." He squeezes Louis' shoulder gently and bends down low over him. "Is that what you need, Lou?" he asks, and the truth is: it is, it really is. Louis can't stop thinking about it, no longer overwhelmed by the scent of them hovering over him, but the familiar rhythm of Harry's heartbeat has settled over him, and Zayn's kicks off a notch behind; they're out of sync with one another, but enticing all the same.

He tilts his head to view Zayn in his periphery. "Is it all right?" he asks, careful to speak clearly, but making sure Zayn has full view of his eyes, of the cat-like slits Harry described. If Zayn won't, Harry can, and maybe he can still salvage this, smooth things over, be a bit less of a monster losing control of himself and draining his friends dry.

"Of course it is," Zayn says with a small smile, and ruffles the back of Louis' hair lightly. He leans back on his elbow and rests his right wrist flat on the bed before Louis' face. "Take it; we've got you, bro. Another bandage over my tats won't make a difference to anyone."

Louis sits up and takes Zayn's hand, running his thumb over the tiny perfect spot where Zayn's pulse throbs under the surface, and he can't help but grin despite himself. He's fallen apart and made everything awkward and the boys are still falling over themselves to make sure he has what he needs. He could kill them and they're giving him access to their arteries instead of a stake through the place where his heart used to beat. "Cheers," he says, holding Zayn's wrist up, and pushes in with his fangs, gets a tiny splash of Zayn's blood on his lip when it kicks back from the puncture wound. 

Zayn is _sweet_ , sweet and crisp with something sharp cutting through the smooth texture of his blood, and as it starts to flow over Louis' tongue, Louis begins to count; one for every beat of Zayn's heart, for every pulse of blood that surges into his mouth. He keeps his eyes open and raises a brow at Zayn, whose gaze is fixed on his own wrist, on Louis' face, mouth slightly open as he watches. Louis wonders what he can see; he has the seal of his lips pressed to Zayn's skin but he wonders how much Zayn can tell from the way Louis' tongue is working, if he can see from here the bob of Louis' Adam's apple as he swallows Zayn's blood down. It feels _good_ , it feels... Louis starts to get that tight feeling again, could let himself enjoy this, the heat of Zayn's blood and the warmth of his skin beneath Louis' tongue, but even before Louis' reached twenty he knows he's had enough and lifts his fangs out as gently as he can. They still make a slick sound that carries in the room as he withdraws and he turns his head, but Zayn's soft "whoa," is his only response.

Louis closes his lips over his fangs and swallows, licks the splash of blood from his Cupid's bow. "How are you?" he asks.

Zayn shrugs, looking down at his wrist with a contemplative frown. "I feel fine," he says, and holds his wrist up to his shoulder. "That wasn't so bad. Stings a bit, but... do I look pale now, or anything?" He prods at his cheeks with the fingers of his left hand, tipping his head back to get some light on it. His heartbeat is strong, carries the same pace as ever; Louis doesn't even recall it skipping a beat or fluttering while he drank.

"You look all right," Harry tells him, feeling at his forehead and the side of his neck the way Louis had done for him. "You should probably lie down, though, to be sure."

"But I'm fine," Zayn protests, letting Harry push him the rest of the way down on the bed anyway. "I don't feel weak or anything."

"Just do it," Louis says, and he feels like he's back to himself, now. "I don't want anyone else passing out because of me." He spares a glance at Liam, curled up on the bed behind them; his breath is steady and slow, his heartbeat back to its resting rhythm. It's the only reason Louis isn't worried, knowing that he'll sleep it off and be all right. "I'm sorry, boys," he says again, feels his fangs pull up into his mouth and tries not to grimace around them. "I didn't think-- I thought I would be able to tell if--"

"We all forget to take care of ourselves sometimes," Niall says with a shrug. "Now we'll be better at it. You really do look all right, Zayn," he comments. "That's weird, isn't it?"

"I think I did a better job on Zayn," Louis admits, pressing his lips together. "I wasn't quite so crazy this time."

"We can do it again next time," Zayn offers. "Harry's still shaky and it's been over a week for him already. I don't mind if you just go with me again next week."

"That's probably not a good idea," Niall shakes his head. "We should stick to the rota."

"But you don't know how you'll be affected," Zayn says. "Maybe you'll be fine too, but what if you're not? What if it takes you more than a week to get yourself back together? Shouldn't we stick with what we know works?" Off their concerned looks, he shrugs and gives a reassuring smile. "If I feel off at all next week, I promise I'll give Niall the next turn. I just think we could use some stability right now, yeah?"

Louis grins at him and raises his eyebrows. "Stability?" he says. "We've just started a world tour and we're discussing my blood-sucking rota, but great, let's give it a go. Stability. Good word, Zayn, good word."

**

 **Louis:** _Can you gain weight from drinking too much blood?_

 **Louis:** _Is some blood more fatty than other blood?_

 

 **Louis:** _Yeah, I thought so._

**

"So do you have, like, super-human hearing, now?" Zayn asks Louis, nudging him with his elbow as they stretch out side by side at the head of Zayn's bed. "Like, can you hear insects scurrying, or, like," he shrugs, "bird's wings flapping?" Zayn's heartbeat is slow, relaxed, a patient, steady thrum, and it helps calm Louis, even though he's still nervous about the prospect of drinking from him. He doesn't like that it's the reason they're together tonight, but if Zayn can act like it's normal, then maybe so can he.

"I _can_ hear a lot more things," Louis confesses. "Mostly people breathing, and their heartbeats. I can't say I've really noticed insects, if I'm being honest."

"It must be terrible when we're onstage, then," Zayn guesses, and Louis squints, trying to remember anything notable.

"You know," he says. "I don't think it's any worse than it was before." He shrugs. "Maybe that's what's supernatural about it," he says. "I can hear your heart beating through your shirt, but," he clicks his fingers. "Twenty-thousand screaming fans? Pitiful." He shakes his head. "Doesn't come close to shattering the vampire eardrum."

Zayn grins back at him. "So you're saying you can't hear voices over great distances, conversations through walls, that sort of thing? I dunno, Louis, if I had a superpower like that I think I'd be all over it."

"I wish I could've _chosen_ my superpower, you know?" Louis says. "I'd rather fly or something cool like that than be able to hear people's voices. I mean, I can hear voices from another room when I'm paying attention, I suppose but... generally I don't want to hear what people are thinking that they won't say to my face."

Zayn nods. "Makes sense," he says. "It's still sick, though. You could use those powers for good."

"Maybe," Louis says, shrugging, though he doesn't see how useful it would be apart from catching the odd bag-snatcher in a crowd. "I think it's just supposed to make it easier for me to eat. Like, bat instincts or something."

"Yeah," Zayn agrees. "I keep forgetting the vampire-bat connection."

Louis pokes him in the arm. " _You've_ been reading too much Batman."

"Nah, I just haven't been reading enough about vampires," Zayn retorts. He pokes Louis back. "Have you spoken to your mum?" he asks.

"Always," Louis says, shaking his head with a smile.

"What did she have to say about all this?"

"I, er..." Louis bites his lip. "Haven't told her yet."

There's a stutter in Zayn's heartbeat at that. "Yeah?" is all he says quietly, after a pause.

"I mean, I don't _really_ have to tell her straight away," Louis hedges. "I could be a really young-looking twenty-five, yeah? I could be a youthful thirty."

"You know she's still gonna love you," Zayn tells him. "If _we_ could see you for who you really are, she definitely will."

"It's not that," Louis insists. "It's just," he gestures vaguely. "One of her kids just _died_. I tell her everything, but I don't wanna be the one to break it to her like that. I don't want her to be sad that I died, even if I _am_ still here, walking around. It's not the same."

"No, I get it, bro," Zayn says softly, reaching across himself to rub Louis' upper arm. "So, tell her when you're thirty," he says. "Or get Nick to tell her," he snorts.

"Now _him_ , I'm afraid she'd kill," Louis laughs. "And I still need him alive, so I can continue to believe he's actually giving me advice."

"What, he's not?" Zayn frowns at him.

"Apart from 'fangs go here', not really," Louis shakes his head. "It's all right. I'm muddling through."

"Yeah, you're doing great so far." Zayn rubs Louis' arm again and when Louis glances at him to see if he's taking the mick, he actually looks sincere. This close, Zayn smells like the sharp flavour of his blood, the cool crisp taste of it that gets Louis' mouth watering.

He ducks his head. "Yeah?" he asks, peeking up at Zayn. "So, er... can I bite you, then?"

Zayn scrunches up his nose and sticks the tip of his tongue out at him. "Ugh, you do need some advice if you're gonna chat me up with a line like that," he says, but he lets Louis take his left wrist all the same. Louis'd looked at his right wrist earlier and there was hardly a trace of the puncture marks, but alternating seemed like the most sensible idea. "Would it even be a chat-up line?" Zayn wonders. "Should it be a bite-up line or something instead?"

"It's just banter," Louis says, turning to face Zayn and crossing his legs before him as his fangs start to come down. "You already said yes."

"That is so sick," Zayn mutters. "Can you just make them come down on command like that?" His pulse starts to pick up, getting louder inside of Louis' head.

"I think it's just 'cause I know what's coming next," Louis tells him, his vision already fading around the edges. "Listen," he says, "is it okay if I--"

"Yeah," Zayn says. "Yeah, go ahead." He shudders a bit when Louis bites, giving texture to the sudden rush of sweetness flowing over Louis' tongue as he drinks, and for the first time Louis feels in control of himself enough to take notice as he keeps count with the beats of Zayn's heart. He starts to feel comfortable, full up, even, on Zayn's blood by the time he reaches the count of ten, and he wonders if it's the source of the tight, turned on feeling he'd had before. He keeps drinking and it spreads through his own dormant veins until he actually starts to feel warm, starts to get hard with it, with the sweetness in Zayn's blood and the slight increase in the speed of his pulse and when Louis withdraws his fangs on twenty he's not quite sure he's done this right.

"Wow," Zayn says, squinting at the tiny spots on his wrist. "That was even better than last time."

"You're all right?" Louis says, looking down at himself to make sure he's not tenting out his trousers, and trying to lick the last of Zayn's blood from his teeth at the same time.

"I feel great," Zayn says. Louis uncrosses his legs and kneels instead, drawing his gaze back up to examine Zayn's skin and listen. Zayn's still warm to the touch, his eyes still bright and he still has colour in his lips as he shrugs under Louis' scrutiny. His heartbeat is still a bit quicker, but that's still better than weaker or irregular, and his breathing rate hasn't changed, so Louis lets it pass without comment.

"You're taking it really well," Louis says. "It's like you're not even affected. You're a really good... subject?" he tries, raising his eyebrows, frowning in consideration.

"Meal?" Zayn suggests.

"There's got to be a better word than that, mate," Louis says around his fangs as they start to recede. "Come back to me, I'll have a better word for you next time."

**

 **Louis:** _What do you call the people you drink from? I'm trying to think of a polite term._

 **Nick:** _I'm not sure what you mean. Prey?_

 **Louis:** _You call your friends prey_

 **Nick:** _Not to their faces, obviously._

 

 **Nick:** _I'm joking, Tomlinson. I call them friends. I don't have another word for them._

 

 **Louis:** _It's a good word, thank you for that._

 

 **Louis:** _Sort of related, but when you feed from your friends does it ever get sexual?_

 **Nick:** _Are you asking if I get turned on? Have you actually found your prick, young Tomlinson?_

 

 **Louis:** _If I let you get a free jab in will you answer the question?_

 

 **Nick:** _The answer is yes. The question is: why do you think I pick up randoms, darling?_

**

Another couple of weeks of performances and rehearsals, backstage videos and promo, of Liam tapping Louis on the shoulder muttering "make sure you top up tonight, Tommo," and Louis' starting to pride himself on his ability to extract himself from Zayn's room with a hardon. He can't determine whether it's solely the feeding that turns him on, or something particular to Zayn; if Zayn is his type, or his taste, or if this would have happened if he'd kept feeding from Harry, or Liam, or someone else entirely. He gets back to his room at the end of the night and wanks to the flavour of Zayn in his mouth, salivating at the memory of it; sometimes his fangs let down like his brain can't tell the difference between a real or imagined feeding, and he comes, biting into his lip and drawing his own blood.

"You don't have to stop, you know," Zayn says mildly the third week, turning his hand over to examine the tiny marks Louis' left on his wrist. "I'm still all right; you didn't have to stop."

"I think the idea is to stop before you feel like I have to stop," Louis tells him, and pushes his tongue at his fangs, still self-conscious, but no longer enough to hide. He licks over them out of habit now, tasting the remains of Zayn's blood. Zayn watches him curiously, and he wonders how it must look to Zayn, Louis' fangs red with his blood, Louis licking the stains away.

"I'm sure you could go for a few more seconds," Zayn says. "I mean, you kind of enjoy it, right? It's not just, like, something you _have_ to do, so you do it." He shrugs. "It's got to taste good, at least, doesn't it? It can't just taste like copper."

"It tastes completely different," Louis says, "than it did when I was--" he waves a hand. _Alive_ , he means, or _human_ , but he knows Zayn will get it. "Like, yeah, I thought it should taste like copper, but it's more like... you know when you get a craving for sweets or something, or you're just like 'I could really have a curry right now, or a pasta'?" Off Zayn's nod of agreement, he says, "it's like that-- like when you get the thing you're craving and it's just like such a relief, just because it was your sweet tooth, or the starches. And everybody tastes so different from each other," he adds. "You're completely different from Liam and he's totally different from Harry."

"Is it ever, like," Zayn shrugs, "more than that? Is it ever more than just a relief? Is it ever, maybe--" he bites down on his lip-- "sexy or anything?"

Louis raises his eyebrows at that. "Sexy?" he asks, very careful not to shift his leg or move his hands to draw attention to how he's gone half-hard just from the taste of Zayn, the smell of him and the warm smoothness of his skin. He tries for a smile. "Is that something you got out of a vampire film?"

Zayn shakes his head and glances back down at his wrist thoughtfully. "Maybe it's just 'cause it's in a sensitive place, then," he says, "or the feeling like my blood's being moved around." He glances back up at Louis and gives a nervous laugh. "It makes me a bit hard, I suppose. Is that, like, a silly human thing to you?"

"Shit," Louis says, sitting up and grabbing Zayn by the wrist. "Every time?" he has to know, has to know if this is part of it, if it goes both ways. He has to know if Harry has ever felt it, or Liam, if they ever felt for a second that they needed to shy away because of it. He has to know why Zayn keeps saying yes to it.

"Well, it's just for a couple of seconds, isn't it," Zayn says. "Not enough to get turned on properly, just--"

"But you wanted to," Louis says, because Zayn is. He feels. While Louis is sucking his blood, he's getting hard the way Louis gets hard and Louis feels like something's been wasted between them, while Louis thought this was something Zayn merely endured to be kind. "I mean, obviously if I kept going, you would--"

"I suppose so," Zayn says, sucking on his tongue the distracted way he gets when his mind starts to wander past the conversation. "Is that-- I reckon you don't feel that sort of thing anymore, like blood replaces sex for you or summat--"

Louis laughs and shakes his head. "Zayn, that is so, so not true," he says.

"So you feel it, too?" Zayn asks, leaning forward and into Louis' space. "Is that how it works?" he says, and Louis pauses, mouth open around a half-formed thought, smelling Zayn, feeling the heat coming off him and warming the fingers Louis has wrapped around him. "I'm asking you," Zayn goes on, speaking into the silence. "Is that why you won't keep going? Is it like you get off on this?"

"Zayn," Louis sighs, "I have literally only drunk from three people! I don't know what happens, all right?" He lets go of Zayn's wrist and looks down at his own hands.

"So," Zayn says softly, "try." He holds out his wrist, resting the back of it on Louis' knee.

Louis looks at it and sucks his lower lip into his mouth, trying to keep a level head about it, like a good mate. "There's better ways of getting off, Zayn," he says.

Zayn shrugs. "Only one way to find out."

"I could hurt you," Louis warns him, but his fingers are already tracing the pulse point and he can feel his fangs let down, his mouth watering at the thought of getting more blood into him tonight.

"I know how to say 'stop', Lou," Zayn tells him. "If I go limp you've gone too far, yeah?" he grins, and Louis knows he's heard the double entendre himself, whether or not he intended to make it.

"Yeah," Louis whispers, eyes drawn down, and he brings Zayn's hand up the rest of the way to his mouth, sinking his fangs into the slightly welling pinpricks in Zayn's skin. He tries to start off slow, trying make it last and not overwhelm Zayn with it in case Zayn starts to fade, but Zayn's blood is laced with this new sweetness, this warm undercurrent of flavour that makes Louis want to press his tongue against the underside of the puncture points and properly _suck_.

Zayn lets out a small sigh and Louis can feel him tense a bit in his grasp. "'s sharp this time," is all Zayn says, when Louis raises his eyebrows at him in question. "We should-- probably switch hands if you're gonna do it again the same night," Zayn mumbles, closing his eyes, and it strikes Louis that it's the first time they've even attempted a conversation while he fed from Zayn. It's surreal, and closing in on another count of twenty, and Louis' pushing with his tongue to the rhythm of Zayn's pulse, really getting the flow going again, when there's a sudden spike of something hot, savoury, over Zayn's usual cool sweetness that has him sucking in a breath through his nose. It's everywhere; he can smell it on Zayn, hear his quickening pulse and sense his widening blood vessels that make Louis' mouth start watering all over again, and a rushing in his ears that makes him flush, goes straight to his cock, hardening further in his jeans.

"Stop," Zayn says with a gasp, pushing at Louis' shoulder with the tips of his fingers like it's a suggestion and not a plea, "stop, stop," and Louis withdraws, eyelashes fluttering at the withdrawal, the loss of sensation and _what_ was that, what was--

"Oh my god, Louis," Zayn's saying, catching Louis' wrist in his free hand. "Did you feel that? It was like I just--"

"You started to taste different," Louis says, still caught up the quick thrum of Zayn's heart beating. "I could taste it-- there was, like, this wave of--"

"I'm so hard right now," Zayn tells him, breathless, his eyes dark as he puts the palm of his hand square into Louis' collarbone and forces him onto his back, crawling practically into his lap. "You could seriously taste it?"

"Fuck, is that what it was," Louis mumbles, eyes darting up to the ceiling for a moment because he can't have this, Zayn leaning into his space, hard, heart racing, smelling like the memory of sex.

"Let me," Zayn says, and kisses Louis, mouth open to start, sucking Louis' upper lip between his own. "I wanna know what it tastes like," Zayn tells him, breaking away and licking his lips before ducking in again for another bruising kiss. He crushes Louis' lips into his own fangs and Louis can feel the skin on his bottom lip stretch almost to breaking under the points of them. Zayn's trying to taste himself: trying, Louis realises, to lick the taste of himself, of his blood, out of Louis' own mouth.

Louis groans. "Fuck," he says, forcing Zayn back enough to catch a breath he doesn't even need. "Can you even taste anything? It doesn't bother you?"

"You can tell me," Zayn says, working a hand down between them and rocking the heel of his hand over Louis' cock when he finds it; Louis arches into it and thinks, absurdly, of how all this extra blood sucking hasn't seemed to make any Zayn weaker at all. Funny, he thinks. Adverse effects and all that, not quite what it says on the tin. "Tell me how it tastes, Lou. I get hard; what's that taste like?"

Louis closes his eyes, achingly hard and trapped between the pressure of Zayn's relentless hand and the mattress, gums tight over his receding fangs and his mouth still watering into Zayn's, at the memory of the surge of flavour, the sudden heat of him. "It's like when you bite into a spice," he says, as Zayn starts to work his way down Louis' torso, "this burst of flavour that's so, so intense, my god--" he stops when Zayn flicks open the button to his jeans and tugs down the zip.

"Does the taste turn you on?" Zayn asks, head bowed over Louis' cock through his pants, breathing heavily through his nose, shaking slightly. Louis's practically trembling himself, at the overwhelming presence of Zayn's arousal, his scent sharper and sharper by the moment, spinning up and up and Louis wonders if he smelled like that too, before; if a vampire would ever have smelled him and thought, _I could come from the smell of your blood alone._ He wonders if that's what Nick thought.

"The taste, yeah," Louis admits, "and the scent, like, it starts to come off really strong." He puts his hand on top of Zayn's head and strokes his thumb through his fringe where it's going damp at the hairline.

Zayn takes one steeling breath before pulling Louis' pants down. "I feel like I need to taste you back or something," he says, staring at Louis' cock. "It only seems fair, innit," he mumbles, before taking Louis' cock into his mouth, and Louis can't even tell where he ends and Zayn begins, who's harder and who's more turned on. Zayn swirls his tongue around the head of Louis' dick and sinks down, down until his lips touch his fingers as he wraps them around the base and Louis tips his head back, tries to hold his hips still. He watches Zayn and lets himself get off on the way Zayn's heartbeat stutters and staggers, the increasing harshness of Zayn's breath through his nose and the way it puffs against his abs on the downstroke.

Zayn's good at this, his mouth hot and soft and the suction of his lips tight, and Louis wonders how many cocks Zayn has sucked, if this feels different for Zayn now than it would have before Louis was turned. Before Louis was dead. He grunts when he comes, lifts his hand off the back of Zayn's head as it curls into a fist, afraid of his own strength if he forces Zayn's head down. Zayn swallows anyway, pulse banging, then pulls off with lips red and wet. Louis thinks he can smell every overwhelming thing Zayn's feeling, now, and he's about to offer a hand, but Zayn just pushes his face into the side of Louis' neck. His hands fumble with his own button and flies and he wanks himself, pressed against Louis' side, hips bucking as he comes shortly after. He turns his head and blinks blearily at Louis, panting, and then bites his lip. "Fuck," he says. "I got your shirt." He tugs down on the hem of it, but Louis can feel the dampness start to stick it to his skin already.

Louis shrugs. "D'you feel like we're even now?" he asks.

Zayn shakes his head. "I got too many questions, bro," he says. "For starters, how do you even get hard without circulation?"

Louis opens his mouth and for a moment nothing comes out, but then Zayn's face relaxes into a giggle and he cracks up as well, helplessly curling up at the ridiculousness of it. "I'm serious," Zayn says, eyebrows waggling, as Louis tries to roll him over and pin him. "I mean, your heart isn't even pumping the blood anywhere -- how is this possible?"

"I dunno, Zayn," he tells him. "I'm kind of magical now, if you haven't noticed. You might have to do some research."

"Does that mean there'll be a next time," Zayn says quietly, looking down and away from Louis' gaze. "Does that mean we can do this again?"

Louis thinks about it; thinks about what Nick said about randoms and about the sharp taste of Zayn's arousal and how badly Zayn seemed to want this. He thinks about how Zayn doesn't make Louis feel like Zayn's doing him a favour, how he's not intimidated or scared even though he's got no idea what to expect, even though he'd never seen the way Louis could get before. "Yeah, if you want," he says, carefully.

**

"Do you always have to do it like this?" Zayn asks.

Louis pauses, Zayn's wrist halfway to his mouth. "Like what?"

"Same position, same spot," Zayn points with his other hand. "Like you have a little ritual."

Louis drops Zayn's hand. "I'm sorry," he says, a bit stung. "Were you getting bored of this already?"

"No, Lou," Zayn tells him. "It's not-- look, it' s just-- I know you can't bite me on the neck, and the wrist is fine, the way we've been doing it's been working out for us, but. I dunno, have you ever thought of changing it a bit? I mean, when you go to the doctor they take blood from the inside of your elbow, have you ever thought of that?"

"Surely I'd hear about it if that was a good place to bite," Louis argues. He wonders why he hasn't heard if that's a good place to bite.

"What if it's just an all right place to bite?" Zayn asks him. He folds his arms, then unfolds them again, dragging his fingertips across the inside of one elbow thoughtfully. "Would that be so awful?"

Louis bites his lip, thinking about the spot on the inner thigh Nick said was best to bite. He watches the path of Zayn's fingers and hears the throb of Zayn's veins beneath the thin skin there. "I don't know," he admits.

"Well, then," Zayn says. "The worst that can happen is you don't like it, right?" He curls his hand into a fist to make the veins pop, and the let-down of Louis' fangs is almost instantaneous when Zayn offers his arm.

The worst thing that can actually happen is that Louis' fangs brush a tendon on the inside of Zayn's elbow, causing him to shout out an "ah! Fuck!" of pain, and the resulting stab of adrenaline and panic in his blood is strong and bitter enough to make Louis want to spit once he withdraws, reeling back in disgust.

"All right, I'm sorry," Zayn says, wincing as he squeezes his arm protectively. "You should trust your vampire instincts from now on. I was wrong."

"If I had any vampire instincts, I would've known that'd be a terrible idea," Louis says, trying to scrape the taste from his tongue with his fingers.

"But you still got some, yeah?" Zayn asks. "You got some blood to take the edge off."

"Yeah, a _bit_ ," Louis says, and Zayn leans suddenly into his space, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth, catching the flat of Louis' fang against his mouth. "What," Louis asks when Zayn pulls back, fighting a smile, because it's still a thrill when Zayn isn't put off by the ways in which Louis makes a pig's ear of half his attempts at properly feeding.

Zayn shrugs. "Helps the flavour a bit, doesn't it," he says. "You said I get sweeter when I'm turned on."

Louis puts up a hand between them, holding Zayn back. "I thought it was the biting that did it," he says.

"Lots of things do it," Zayn says softly, and Louis looks from his eyes to his mouth and back again. It would be so easy to lean in just a bit and kiss Zayn's mouth again, gentle, careful of his fangs, and so Louis does, touching his tongue to the underside of Zayn's upper lip and then sucking it briefly into his mouth before they separate again.

"Since when," Louis asks him, barely moving his mouth to say it.

Zayn shrugs again, glancing back down at his arm. "Since now," he says. "Since this. Listen," he adds, "don't bite my tongue, all right," his breath quickening, and then he pushes Louis back onto the bed, leaning up over him and kissing him again, teasing him with the tip of his tongue and licking at the tops of his fangs like there's anything left to taste of himself. He kisses Louis like he wants to keep him from talking, like he can keep the air out of Louis' lungs, like Louis needs the air the way he does, and Louis lets him, likes the way Zayn sometimes acts like he's hungry for him.

"You wanna try again now?" Zayn asks him, pulling his hand up and resting the thin skin of his wrist against Louis' mouth. "I promise it'll be better this time."

Louis grins up at him. "I can tell you're hard from here, Zayn," he says, craning his neck enough that he can feel the pulse swell against his lips. "I don't need to taste you to know that much," he mumbles, grasping Zayn's arm gently to twist it and tuck in. The sweetness in Zayn's blood is even more enticing now than it was before Louis felt he needed to make up for the bad bite, the steady flow of it making him feel tight everywhere; in his pants, and around his heart. Zayn shifts over him and works a hand down between them to touch Louis' cock through his trousers, and Louis moans and pushes against Zayn's skin with his tongue, squirming under Zayn's hand with his grip slipping on his arm.

"Interesting," Zayn says, a faint smirk curving his lips on one side. "You can't keep up, can you? Is it because of how turned on _I_ am?" His voice is low, and he squeezes Louis' cock gently; Louis screws his eyes shut, rocks up into it and bites down harder. Zayn's arousal is like a constant trickle of sweetness, layering and building as Louis drinks, growing heavy and savoury. "Or is it because of how turned on _you_ are?" Zayn goes on. He pats Louis' dick. "That's twenty, by the way."

Louis takes his fangs out of Zayn's wrist with a grimace. It's not a clean withdrawal; a string of saliva stretches from one fang to Zayn's skin and breaks delicately against his chin. "I _know_ it's twenty," he whines. "You're awfully brave, talking when someone's got their fangs in your vein."

"Exactly," Zayn says, then kisses him, ignoring Louis' grunt of protest because it's sloppy, spit on his chin and fangs out and traces of Zayn's blood still between them. "Copper," Zayn mutters, shaking his head, and Louis shrugs; Zayn presses a few more closed-mouth kisses to Louis' fangs and licks his bottom lip before pulling back, tracing his fingers up and down the line of Louis' cock. "So if you could hurt me, like you said," he continues, running his tongue over his own lower lip. "Why can't I mess you about a bit?"

" _Because_ I could hurt you; that's the reason!" Louis frowns at him, rubbing at his chin with the back of his hand, because the spit on his chin probably doesn't help him look intimidating, even if his fangs are still there. He flicks the button of his flies open. "You can stop teasing," he says, "I'm not gonna bite you now."

"But you'd be careful," Zayn points out, pressing in harder with his fingers but keeping up a slow pace. "You've _been_ careful." He ducks his head and tugs down Louis' zip, crawling down the length of Louis' body and hooking his fingers in the waistband of Louis' pants. He gets his hand inside and on Louis' dick to stroke him properly, then, fisting over the tip and sliding Louis' foreskin up and over with every tug, the way Louis likes it. Zayn's usually started wanking himself by the time he finally gets his lips on Louis, but this time he just takes Louis in deep, working him with a quick rhythm in his mouth and clever little flicks of his tongue, avoiding his own cock entirely.

"Why are you holding back," Louis asks him, voice strained. "Don't think I can't hear your turned-on little heart beating from here."

"I just want to make it last," Zayn pulls off to say, then nips at Louis' balls with his teeth before he sucks him down again, swallows around him, throat working to make Louis come. Louis curls a bit up off the bed when he does, and Zayn holds him down by the hips, trapping his knees beneath his chest.

"Great," Zayn says, pulling off and sitting back to unfasten his own flies, palming himself through his pants. "Can you go again?"

"Zayn!" Louis laughs, incredulous, still boneless and shaky and with his dick out. "Of course not."

"No," Zayn says, "not 'of course not'. There is no 'of course not'. You're magical, remember? None of this is even supposed to work."

"I'm pretty sure I had a working orgasm just now, Zayn," Louis says, and tries to sit up. "Hey, but my fangs are in," he says. "I could suck you off."

Zayn slaps his hand away when Louis tries to reach for him. "You don't even want to try?" he asks Louis, fingers curling around his dick like he's just relieving some pressure. "You haven't even ever tried? To just... keep going?"

"I haven't tried anything," Louis says, tucking himself back into his pants. "I haven't really thought about it."

"Then let me," Zayn says, raising back up on his knees and crushing his lips to Louis'. He tastes like Louis, the same way Louis used to taste, and for a moment Louis thinks that's the most normal thing about all of this; that Louis still has a flavour he can taste on someone else's tongue. Zayn straddles Louis while they kiss, messy, licking into one another's mouths, and he grinds down on him with his hips, still stroking himself. He pushes his pants and jeans down to his thighs and reaches back inside Louis' pants for his dick, drawing him out again to rub his thumb over the still-sensitive tip of Louis' cock. Louis gasps at the shock of it, hands flying up to steady Zayn's shoulders above him, or hold him tight, he isn't sure which, and he shudders as Zayn gives him a few sharp, short tugs, tearing little sounds out of his throat.

"S-sensitive," Louis hisses, pushing slightly at Zayn's shoulders. He turns his face to the side and feels his mouth stretch open like his fangs want to let down, but he isn't even thinking of feeding.

"Yeah, I bet," Zayn pants. "But it's hot, isn't it? You know exactly how hot this is," he says, and Louis nods, squirming and getting harder because he does. He can smell it on Zayn and hear it in his heartbeat and Zayn's hand is relentless on his dick, the stimulation nearly painful, but Louis can practically _taste_ the come in Zayn, he's so close. "Christ, Lou," Zayn says, rubbing up against Louis so their cocks align, bumping awkwardly with his fist still stroking Louis, "you're like a feedback loop, aren't you?" He lets the thumb of his other hand come down to rest over Louis' arsehole, and Louis clenches in surprise, but he's trapped by his trousers and by Zayn's weight, can't draw his knees up and out of the way. He's not sure whether he wants Zayn to continue pressing in or to remove his thumb entirely, fangs out, nostrils flaring at the scent of everything--

"I wanna fuck you sometime," Zayn says suddenly, breath heaving, rubbing Louis' hole slightly with his thumb. "Would that be all right?"

Louis tips his head back, nodding, arching his back and tilting his hips down. "Yeah," he says, hoping Zayn will stop talking, will just let him finish, and then Zayn comes, hand tightening around him, slicking the both of them. Louis whines in the back of his throat as he follows, pushing the tip of his tongue into the roof of his mouth so he won't bite into Zayn's carotid artery, ears thumping with the way it strains against the side of Zayn's neck.

It's Zayn who bites him just above the collarbone, gently, before licking over the spot to soothe the sting of it. His breath is still coming fast and hot against Louis' skin, drying it in tiny, gasping puffs of air. "Amateur," Louis says lazily, patting Zayn on the head. "There's no arteries there. You wouldn't even leave a bruise."

"You don't bruise anymore," Zayn comments automatically, and his eyelashes tickle as he opens his eyes to look up at Louis. "And I was right," he says, with just a hint of a smile. "You _could_ go again."

"I did," Louis admits.

"You _are_ magical," Zayn tells him. "You could probably go a third time, as well."

Louis cringes at the thought, but he realises he's thinking in human terms now, the notion that that's just not possible, not even worth considering. "Maybe?" he says. "Not sure if you're up to it."

"No, I'm done," Zayn says sleepily. "I was just wondering." He sighs. "I meant what I said, earlier."

"Yeah?" Louis says.

"It doesn't have to be, like, right away or anything," Zayn says. "You don't even have to make it about biting me, or whatever. I just thought we might try it."

Louis doesn't know if he can do that, if he can have Zayn like that without the pull of the other senses that make him want to drink Zayn's lifeblood. He doesn't know if he's allowed to want Zayn like that, if that's a thing vampires can do, if that's something vampires can aspire to. "Yeah," he says, anyway. "I'd really like that."

**

"Hello," Louis says to Zayn, when he opens his hotel room door. "Are you all right?"

"Hey, bro," Zayn says. He looks rumpled and tired, hair falling down over his forehead, and his breath is slow and regular like sleep.

"I-- I was kind of hoping you were free tonight," Louis tells him.

"Yeah?" Zayn asks. "It's only been three days," he says.

"I know," Louis says. "But I've been thinking about what you said. About trying things."

"Changing stuff," Zayn prompts.

"Exactly." Louis' been thinking about it a lot. He's thought about it with a couple of his fingers in his own arse, and biting into his own wrist. "There's this... other place," he says. "Where you can bite-- there's, like, an artery in the groin that goes straight to your heart."

"Yeah?" Zayn says again, as Louis brushes past him and puts his hands in his pockets.

"I mean, obviously I wouldn't really feed from it, but--"

"You wanna try it," Zayn guesses.

"'Cause it's in the thigh," Louis blurts. "I thought-- it could be sexy."

"It could be," Zayn agrees, reaching for him, and Louis lets Zayn turn him, pushing him back into the door and pressing up against him to kiss. Zayn tastes so different, smells so different depending on where Louis gets him; the acrid post-show adrenaline scent has mostly faded, and there's a tinge of something thick and syrupy - probably Zayn's own exhaustion - that will be gone by morning. They cling to each other and get Zayn stripped down quickly between them, and Zayn's knee knocks against the door when he slides it between Louis' legs. Louis starts pushing him backwards toward the bed, climbing over him once they get there, but when he's knelt between Zayn's spread thighs, he pauses. Zayn's cock is already filling in a bit against his thigh, and for a moment Louis stares down at him, unable to decide which he even wants more.

"Er-- I've got lube," Zayn offers, drawing Louis' attention upward, as he gestures to the bedside table. "Here," he says, and rolls over to pull out the drawer and fumble around until he's got a bottle, pushing it into Louis' hands. "Don't bite my dick," he says, with a small smile, and Louis grins back, stunned, nodding down at Zayn's crotch, because he's bitten Zayn a half dozen times already, but this. He's never done this.

He slicks up his fingers, and Zayn's dick is plumping up further and lengthening even as Louis pets over his balls; he can hear the uptick in Zayn's heartrate as he rubs his fingers against Zayn's hole. Zayn starts to touch himself then, making an effort to stifle his breath, holding it in and then gulping air a few beats later, and when Louis finally gets his middle finger inside Zayn he can't resist any longer, too much blood rushing under the surface too close to him, Zayn squirming around his finger. His fangs let down and he hitches up Zayn's thigh with his other hand, leans in and buries his nose in the pale crease between groin and thigh, sinks his fangs into soft, giving flesh.

Zayn hisses at the bite and Louis is hard at once, understands in an instant why this spot is so good and why he probably shouldn't use it. The blood practically gushes out around the puncture wounds, far too sweet and too much for Louis to catch at once, even when he tries to form a seal with his lips and give one proper suck. A rivulet slips past his mouth and trickles down the side of Zayn's thigh, and with a low moan of regret Louis disengages to lick at it, kisses the wound sloppily as he works another finger past Zayn's rim. The marks don't close up right away, weeping sweetly into Louis' mouth and Louis thinks it might be for the best, that he just have this rather than suck Zayn dry through a major artery as he twists his fingers inside Zayn, drawing out a steady whimper, _making_ Zayn breathe, making him feel it. He rocks up on his knees to get the seam of his jeans pressed against his cock, to relieve some of the pressure he's feeling.

Zayn's head is tipped up to the ceiling, mouth open and throat working as Louis fucks him, and his heartbeat is _everywhere_ ; pulsing in his dick under his own hand, racing in his chest, throbbing in his neck. It stutters and speeds up and Zayn gasps and begins to flutter around Louis' fingers as he starts to come, and Louis has to know, _needs_ to know how Zayn would taste, what Zayn coming would taste like. He licks at the tiny, welling marks left by his fangs and seeks them out with his teeth, lines up and bites down again, sucking hard and tight. Zayn cries out, his thigh jerking under Louis' mouth and from Louis' vantage point he can see Zayn start to shoot over his own chest, arse clamping down hard on Louis' fingers. The blood rushing into Louis' mouth is practically frothy with flavour, spiked with endorphins, and Louis moans against Zayn's slick skin, holding his thigh fast as it tremors.

Zayn comes down slowly as Louis withdraws his fangs and his fingers, and he looks down with dismay at the tiny trails of blood he's missed trickling down to the underside of Zayn's thigh. He tries to adjust himself through his jeans, but ends up just pushing the heel of his hand into his dick instead.

"Um," Zayn says, blinking rapidly at the ceiling. "Um, I, er--"

"All right?" Louis says.

"Oh, it _hurt_ , but-- I've never come so hard in my life," Zayn breathes.

"It was pretty amazing," Louis admits. "You tasted--" he laughs in disbelief. "Fucking incredible, bro, I mean, I--"

"Come up here," Zayn says, reaching for him and waving a bit lazily. "You're still hard, right?"

"Very much so," Louis says. "Yeah." He rubs his thumb through the worst of the trails on Zayn's thigh and licks the blood off before he straddles Zayn and climbs his way up Zayn's torso, undoing his flies as he goes. Zayn's eyes flutter shut as he sucks Louis down and Louis braces himself against the wall above his head with his hand, rocking into Zayn's mouth and coming after just a few short, quick strokes. When he looks down again Zayn is watching him, a bit tight around the eyes, and Louis sits back, letting his cock fall out of Zayn's mouth.

"I keep thinking you'll look different when you come," Zayn murmurs, "like how you say I taste different, you know?" He shakes his head. "It's hard to believe it's only the blood that makes you change. It's like this is nothing to you."

"It's not, though," Louis insists. "It's definitely something, it's--" he shrugs. "I genuinely don't know how to have one without the other anymore."

Zayn closes his eyes. "It's pretty sick, isn't it," he says.

"It's unbelievable," Louis agrees.

**

"Are you all right there, mate?" is the first thing Niall says when Zayn meets the others out behind the hotel for their ride. There's a surprised skip to Niall's heartbeat, but Zayn's remains steady, thudding low and regular. Zayn rubs at his face and pushes his snapback up to scrub at his hair, dark circles under his eyes, and he licks his lips.

"Yeah," he says. "I think I just didn't sleep well last night."

"Did you wake up with bad dreams or something?" Louis asks him, feeling his forehead, because when he left Zayn's room, Zayn was out cold, deep in sleep, heartbeat and breathing steady.

Zayn shakes his head and ducks out from under Louis' hand. "I can't remember," he says, gratefully accepting the coffee Liam passes to him. It's the first time this tour that Zayn's looked even remotely weary, so as they get shuffled into their people carrier Paul makes noises about jet lag and vitamin jabs and iron pills for the other boys, and the subject of whatever's kept Zayn from sleeping is quickly abandoned for arguments about seating arrangements and what words they're going to work into today's promo interviews. On the way to the venue, Zayn naps on the bus, head resting on Louis' shoulder, and Louis turns his head to watch Zayn's mouth as he sleeps, remembers how red his lips had looked the night before, sucking his fingers. Zayn still has a heavy, slightly sour scent to him that Louis only recalls smelling strongly in the hours after a show, and he rests his chin on top of Zayn's head, willing Zayn to get some proper sleep and chase it away.

It's after rehearsals, when they're playing around organising their mics and getting in the way of the band, when Liam grabs Zayn around the waist, pulling him in to whisper something. Zayn staggers back when Liam releases him, regains his footing for a moment, then seems to think better of standing and sits down right on the stage, legs folded beneath him. There's a momentary pause of shock before an eruption of activity; Paul charging onto the stage calling for a bottle of orange juice, Harry's soft murmurs as he sits next to Zayn with an arm around him, Liam rubbing his hands over his hair asking when Zayn last ate.

Louis stands with his arms crossed, biting a fingernail, head pounding with everyone's panicked heartrates and breathing and the stench of panic in the air, and in the middle of it all, Zayn's heart flutters.

"Maybe he needs a break from it," Liam says gently, coming up behind him with a hand to the back of Louis' neck, and Louis starts at the unexpected touch, can't believe he didn't hear him approach in the chaos. Louis spins around to look at him, and Liam raises his eyebrows, letting go of him and holding up his hands. "You got a flash of cat eye, there," he breathes, eyes wide. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"You didn't," Louis snaps, not bothering to mention it's because he was already scared, blinking the clouds away from his vision. He's got to be careful here, too, with the boys and with everyone, and his instincts are shit, telling him to fight someone, but the only threat to Zayn's life right now is him. Zayn's come to his senses enough to shrug out of Harry's grasp, insisting he's all right. He takes the bottle of juice Paul gives him anyway, and all Louis can hear is the stutter of his heart, underscoring all the chaos and the worried mutters and the tense heat coming off Liam next to him.

Niall joins them off to the side and lowers his voice, leaning in to ask, "when're you next due for a feeding, Louis?" and Louis stares at him blankly for a moment, caught out. The past few times he'd just gone to Zayn because he could, because Zayn had let him, because it wasn't proper feeding anyway, and so he hasn't kept track.

Liam comes to his rescue, pulling out his mobile and flipping through his calendar. "It's tomorrow, isn't it," he offers. "I've got it marked for a reminder."

"All right, then," Niall nods. "You can start up again with me." He nudges Louis with his elbow. "We should probably get back to the rota if it's too much for him."

"I'm really okay, guys," Zayn protests, finally getting back to his feet, but he's grimacing, sounding more disappointed in himself than anything.

"Then a couple of weeks off won't hurt you, will it," Louis calls out, a bit sharper than he means to. He catches up to Zayn as they leave the stage and takes him by the arm. "I always ask if you're all right, Zayn," he says urgently. "You always say you're fine."

"I _am_ fine," Zayn says stubbornly. "I'm just _tired_." His heart flutters like it wants to beat out of his chest.

Louis searches his face, anxious. "You're not even pale," he says desperately, reduced to pointing out the obvious. "But you sounded _better_ last night, you-- can't you feel that? Can't you feel your _heart_ right now?"

"I just need some sleep, Lou," Zayn says, and tilts his head to Louis' when Louis squeezes his arm.

**

"All right," Niall says, when Louis gets to his room. "The only thing I have to know is, how much is this gonna hurt? I haven't got a tattoo or anything to compare it to."

"I... am the one doing the biting," Louis explains to him slowly. "So I haven't got the slightest idea how much it's gonna hurt."

"But you've already been bitten once," Niall points out, letting Louis in and closing the door behind him.

"I can't actually remember what that was like," Louis says.

"Well, you're not painting a very good picture right now, mate," Niall mutters, leading the way to his bed. "Have a beer," he calls over his shoulder. "We'll watch some telly and you can get drunk off me."

"I don't think it works that way," Louis says as he follows Niall. "I've tried. It was, like, one of the _first_ things I tried."

Niall stops and turns to look at him. "It's like you got literally none of the benefits of being a vampire," he says, clapping Louis on the back sympathetically.

They do exactly as Niall suggests, drinking a couple of beers and watching the telly until Louis can't take the steady patter of Niall's heart any longer, stuck thinking about Zayn's heart instead, and the way it had fluttered, erratic. He reaches for Niall's arm during an advert for chocolate cake and presses his fingertips to the pulse point in Niall's wrist, seeking warmth, feeling how alive Niall is.

"Do you need me to lay down or make a fist or anything?" Niall asks, getting up on his knees and shuffling closer, but Louis shakes his head.

"No," he says, "I've got this, thanks," and nicks Niall's vein before pressing in, inching deeper on every pulse of blood that washes into his mouth. Niall's blood has a light texture, malty and smooth, like the memory of having a cup of tea with biscuits, and he stays silent as Louis drinks, fingers curled lightly. There's enough of Niall's blood in him that Louis starts to feel full before he's finished drinking, veins thickening out with it, but he thinks about how irregularly he'd been feeding before, how he won't get to do it again for another week, and he forces himself to continue. He's a bit curious about whether Niall will feel anything different as the time stretches on, whether Louis will taste a powerful wave of arousal the longer he feeds, but in the end there's not much of anything, just the salt of Niall's skin and the warm traces of blood at the corners of Louis' mouth. When Louis lifts his fangs out, Niall examines the marks on his wrist with an impressed frown, raising his eyebrows. "That wasn't so bad at all," he says, licking his lips, skin eerily translucent around the eyes. "I just feel a bit thirsty now. Is that it?"

"You have gone a bit pale, though," Louis informs him. "You should probably stick to water for the night, and have a lie down." He puts his hand on Niall's forehead, then cups his cheek, but Niall's heart keeps thumping away, unaffected. "You'll be all right," he decides, but he doesn't even trust his own assessment anymore. "Thanks, Niall."

"Zayn'll be fine, too," Niall tells him. "He'll be back on the rota in no time, you'll see."

Louis forces a grin, careful around his fangs. "Of course he will, Nialler," he says, and gets up off the bed. He leaves Niall to sleep and goes back to his room, full to the point of illness, veins stretched with Niall's lifeblood, but his chest feels hollow. His heart doesn't feel a damn thing.

**

Zayn doesn't look any better the following morning, though he resolutely refuses to nap during the day, takes Red Bulls out of the case provided by the venue, and glares at everyone as though daring them to comment. He doesn't lose his footing again, and his heartrate is regular, now, but Louis can't remember if it always had that soft echo to it, or if he's only just noticed it. He follows Zayn around onstage, unable to hear past the sensory overload of their live show; he tries to touch Zayn whenever he can to sense the flow of blood as it moves through Zayn's body. Zayn stays standing, stubbornly, like he's getting better, but the circles under his eyes are as dark as ever and he looks like he's dead on his feet.

Two shows in, Zayn follows Louis to his hotel room, a determined look on his face. "I haven't seen much of you the past few days," he comments, as Louis gets the door open to let himself in.

Louis turns, standing over the threshold, and gives him a tight grin. "I thought you'd rather be sleeping," he says, dropping his messenger bag just inside the door.

"I _have_ been sleeping," Zayn tells him, stepping just inside the room after him as Louis closes the door. "I've been sleeping _all_ the time. I even took something to make me sleep. Sleeping's all I've been doing."

"Well, you've been doing it wrong, bro," Louis says, shaking his head sympathetically and placing a hand on Zayn's shoulder to break him bad news. "You look like shit." He also smells of exhaustion, just as heavy as he did the first day he got tired, like the clinging scent of food that's gone off.

"Then it doesn't matter whether I go back to my room and sleep some more, or spend the night with you, does it?" Zayn asks, dropping his own bag. "If I'm still gonna look like shit in the morning, I might as well come see you."

Louis realises he has the door handle gripped tightly in one hand behind his back, and makes himself let go. "But we can't," he starts to say. "What if I can't-- what if I have to bite you?"

Zayn shrugs, crowding Louis back into the door. "Then I reckon you'll bite me," he says. "But I don't think you'll hurt me."

Louis laughs bitterly. "I think it's a bit late for that, bro," he says. "You're barely _standing_. If I were you, I would--" Louis stops and thinks about it for a moment, lets the proximity of Zayn's body warm him, and then he slides down with his back to the door to get awkwardly onto his knees, forcing Zayn back a step to give him space. "I would want to mess me about a bit," Louis admits, softly, looking up at him. Louis isn't Zayn, knows that Zayn doesn't have his particular drive for comeuppance, but Zayn is fucked up right now, heartbeat like a tinpot echoing pitifully in his chest. Zayn's breath is soft and regular and he barely smells of his sweet arousal, just the sour of tired, and Louis can't give Zayn's blood back to him, but maybe if Louis lets Zayn fuck him up, too, they can be fucked up and unsteady together. Zayn frowns down at him like there's something he's not sure of, and Louis can't stand it, sets about unfastening Zayn's belt and button and opens up his flies, tugs his pants down to reveal his cock, not yet fully hard. "Come on, Zayn," he says, "I haven't even sucked you off properly yet. We haven't done _anything_ properly yet. Let me have this."

Zayn gives Louis a shrug and a sigh, which Louis thinks is as good as a yes, so he darts forward to lick at the head of Zayn's cock, coaxing it into his mouth as he brings up a hand to cradle the base. Zayn gets harder and thicker in his mouth and Louis tries to taste him, feel his pulse under his tongue and note the flavour of his skin instead of thinking about all the blood rushing beneath the surface, the spike of heat that he'd be able to taste if Zayn were to bleed. Louis doesn't need to breathe but he still has a gag reflex keeping him from sucking Zayn all the way down on the first try; he marks the lowest spot he can reach with the circle of his fingers and hits it every time he bobs his head, kissing his fingers on the way down and pushing against the crown of Zayn's dick with the flat of his tongue on the way up. With his other hand he gropes for one of Zayn's and puts it on the back of his head, squeezing his fingers over Zayn's until Zayn pulls his hair into a soft fist. He lets go of Zayn's hand, but Zayn's grip is still gentle enough that Louis can pull off his cock entirely, and he says, pointedly, "I won't choke, and you can't break me."

Zayn swallows hard, gaze boring down into Louis', and he nods, tightening his hand, and when Louis puts his mouth on Zayn again and lowers his mouth to meet his fingers, Zayn applies pressure to the back of his head and keeps him down. Louis squeezes his eyes shut and digs the fingers of his free hand into Zayn's hip and it's enough to make him hard, because this is what he wanted; he's been devouring Zayn, drinking bits and pieces of Zayn's life away and what he wanted was all of this, for Zayn to fill him up and _make Louis take it_. Zayn tugs on his hair and Louis goes with him, pulling nearly off Zayn's cock and then being pressed back down, and then there's a tiny spurt of pre-come, salty and warm, that spills out over Louis's tongue. It's nothing at all like the sweet flavour of Zayn's blood when he's hard, but it makes Louis whimper around his cock all the same, rock into the seam of his own joggers. He opens his eyes again and looks up through his fringe at Zayn; at his bitten lips, still full of colour, and at the shadows beneath his cheekbones that make him look like death, but Louis can feel the heat of Zayn between his lips, can trace the veins in his cock with his tongue and feel the slide of it as Zayn hauls him up and off, forces him back down with a grunt. For now he feels like he doesn't have to worry, that Zayn is alive and all right as long as he still has the strength to tug at Louis with a fist in the hair, to fuck his mouth and drag little needy sounds from his throat, to come.

Louis can feel the moment Zayn's cock swells just a bit in his mouth, taste the last little blurt of pre-come and hear the sharp gasp Zayn makes right before he comes, and he wishes he could have had it before, could have done this before the memory of blood and the accompanying thud of Zayn's too-quiet heart. He blinks up at Zayn, vision clear, as the first pulse of Zayn's come floods the back of his mouth, and he swallows it down like it's blood, tries to pretend he'd had it first. "Oh, my god, Louis, your _eyes_ ," Zayn groans, shuddering through it, making Louis drink his come. "I can't-- you can't look at me like that, you can't--" he bites his lip and and shakes his head, thrusting one last time into Louis' mouth though there's nothing else to give, and then his grip goes slack and he leans forward, reaching over Louis' head to brace himself against the door.

Louis pulls back and watches Zayn recover, gulping, while his heart comes back down. He slips his hand inside his joggers and pants and wanks himself quickly, thinking of Zayn's mouth on him instead of asking Zayn to finish him, or waiting for Zayn to offer. He thinks he's maybe asked too much of Zayn by now, twisting his hand and rubbing his thumb along the underside of his cock, rolling his foreskin hard until he comes over his own fist, tongue pressed to the back of his teeth where he's grown used to protecting it from his fangs. Zayn's watching him when he blinks his eyes open again, trousers sorted and back pressed to the door, and Louis waves his hand apologetically, come sticky on his fingers. "So you _don't_ have to bite," Zayn observes.

Louis nods. "I suppose not," he says.

"So," Zayn says, dropping down to sit next to Louis, "if I promise to sleep, and you promise not to bite...." he shrugs. "We can do something tomorrow?"

**

"If I didn't know any better," Zayn says, "I'd think you were trying to get me to hurt you."

"You _can't_ hurt me," Louis grits out between his teeth. It _doesn't_ hurt, the slow slide of Zayn's cock inching into him; it stretches him, skin pulled taut, but his arse isn't tender, and the stretch is good, better even than the hand Zayn has squeezing the back of Louis' neck. Niall got it wrong, Louis thinks. He's got the best parts of being a vampire, able to feel everything that much more, except for the things that hurt. He's full up on Harry's blood, cock rubbing sweetly between his stomach and the sheets on Zayn's bed, Zayn's breath ruffling his hair as he gets seated all the way inside him.

"That's what I said," Zayn says, lips touching the back of Louis' ear. "I do know better. But it's like you want me to try. You can still feel pain, right? You want me to be rough with you?" 

Louis shrugs, turning his head so that Zayn's mouth is on the corner of his jaw. "You could give it a go," he says, not wanting to seem too eager, wondering what it would be like if Zayn just gave the length of his cock to him in hard, swift strokes.

"But it's just play-acting, isn't it," Zayn says. "You're just pretending I could hold you down." He puts his mouth back on Louis' skin and takes a moment to get his breath back, dragging his cock slowly out and rocking back in, slow and shallow, hitting Louis' prostate. "Is it just that you need something _more_? Is it really so much better when you can taste me?" He rubs his nose on Louis' shoulder, groaning, shoving Louis' body up the bed with a few short thrusts. "I thought I might imagine what it was like," he says. "I thought maybe if you told me, I could--" he squeezes his hand on the back of Louis' neck. "I'll never know what that's like," he says. "I just wanted a part of you, but I can't even hold you down; you just _let me_."

Louis can't speak for a moment, mouth open on the pillow, so full and sated he couldn't possibly take another drop, but when he rubs his cheek on the pillowcase his fangs let down just enough to snag, pulling a strip through the edge of it. "But I want you to," he slurs, around the points of his teeth. He wants to give something back to Zayn so much, so badly. He wishes he hadn't taken so much. "I want you to have me--"

"If I made you come like this," Zayn says, his rhythm starting to break down as he speeds up, "would that be enough?" He stretches his free arm out, tracing his fingers down Louis' side, catching over his ribs. "Could you come again, after?" He's nudging Louis' prostate with every jab of his hips, making pre-come rise to the tip of Louis' cock between his belly and the bed, making his toes curl. "Could you come on my fingers?" Zayn asks him, his voice strained, panting into Louis' shoulder as he puts his forehead down on the back of Louis' hair.

"I don't know," Louis whines, hands fisting around the sides of his pillow. He fills his nose with the scent of it, of hotel linen and detergent instead of the hot, saccharine odour of Zayn's blood, of the sour undercurrent that he carries with him everywhere.

Zayn reaches around and wiggles his hand between Louis and the sheets. "Then don't come, all right?" he says, half a growl, as he drives into Louis, pushing him up the bed, feeling around for Louis' cock with his hand. "Don't come yet." He squeezes the base of Louis' cock just as Louis starts to shudder, coil of pressure building low in his abdomen, and Louis feels himself go tight around Zayn, feels his balls draw up and feels all that pressure have nowhere to go, pulsing inside of him with nothing coming out, no release. He keens into the pillow, biting, fangs tearing, and Zayn's heart pounds; he gives a shout from above Louis and then muffles a whimper into Louis' skin as he comes into his condom, hips jerking rapidly for a few final thrusts.

"Ah, fuck, take it," Zayn pants, drawing back, lifting his weight off Louis. He pulls out and gives Louis' cock a few soft strokes, only gripping him loosely now as he drags his other hand down Louis' spine, presses his thumb into the crease between his cheeks. "Put your hand here."

"You want me to get myself off?" Louis blinks, trying to clear his vision, teeth still clenched together after having got so close to coming. He tries to ride the motion of Zayn's hand, tries to get some more friction against him as he places one hand over Zayn's, cupping himself over it.

"I want you to hold it," Zayn tells him. "Don't come just yet," he repeats, and withdraws his hand to continue his way down Louis' body until Louis feels Zayn's nose replace his thumb between his arse cheeks, feels Zayn's hands start to spread him open. Zayn darts his tongue out to catch the stretched rim of Louis' arse, and Louis grunts, hand tightening around his cock without even thinking; then he really does have to squeeze to stop from coming, as Zayn teases him with little kitten licks around his hole, easing a finger gently inside, using the remnants of lube along with his spit to ease the way.

"Are you still thirsty?" Zayn asks him, breath tickling Louis' skin as he curls his finger, making Louis rock back against him with a choked whimper. It's more challenge than taunt, Louis knows, from the way Zayn's teasing Louis too much to let him get a word in. "You still can't think of anything but drinking from me?" He kisses the skin around his finger, works another finger in and rubs at Louis' prostate relentlessly, holding Louis' hip steady with his other hand - trusting Louis to stay - and Louis does, shaking, pushing his face into his pillow, cutting ribbons into it instead of his own lip. Louis' erection hasn't had a chance to go down, still stiff in his hand, and it weeps a drop of pre-come, oversensitive to the point of pain, akin to the throb in his balls.

"I'm not," Louis mewls weakly, "I need to--" his vision clears and his fangs draw up enough for him to close his mouth properly, swallow drily. "I have to come, Zayn, please, I'm gonna--"

"Are you, now," Zayn asks, taking his face out of Louis' arse at last and pushing at his hip to get him to turn over, fingers still inside, stroking. "Come on, then," Zayn says, and now he _is_ taunting, dipping his head to mouth sloppily at the wet tip of Louis' dick, displacing Louis' hand and sucking him down properly. Louis barely gets his fingers in Zayn's hair, can barely decide whether the soft, hot wetness of Zayn's mouth is too much or not enough before he's coming at last, abs and arse tightening, voice hoarse.

Zayn releases Louis with a wet sound and licks at his bottom lip. "How about now," he says, breathing hard, twisting his fingers. "Is this enough for you? Or do you want more? Do you want more of me?"

Louis starts to salivate at the suggestion, and his eyes roll up with Zayn's proximity warming him, his heart thudding faintly, but Louis' had enough. His fangs stay tight in his gums and his skin feels tight all over, the ache in his balls only barely relieved even though he's already come. "I don't wanna feed," he confesses. "I _can't_ , I'm done."

"Good," Zayn tells him, pressing on, tapping his prostate, making him squirm on Zayn's fingers for a bit before easing them out. "See, I don't think you're all that different, bro," Zayn says, running his hands lightly up Louis' thighs, coaxing his legs down. "You just start thinking you're, like, a monster or something, and it does your head in." He leans up over Louis to kiss him, mouth warm and wet and tasting of Louis, and then he pulls away and shrugs, grinning. “But I make you come enough, and you’re just like the rest of us mortals.”

“Only until I’m hungry again,” Louis points out.

“Then you’re just like a bitey mortal, which you were before, by the way,” Zayn says. “Bet I can make you come until you forget you’re hungry.”

Louis stares up at him, fascinated. “You know, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to try.”

**

 **Louis:** _How can you tell when you've drunk too much from someone?_

 **Louis:** _They would just start to get weak, wouldn't they? If you stop drinking from them, they should be fine ??_

 **Louis:** _I've never made anyone unconscious, I just need to know_

**

"All right, what have you done," Nick says as soon as Louis unlocks his mobile to answer his call, and Louis thinks it figures that he doesn't even get to be gratified, that Nick having finally responded to him without making him sweat for it means the news is probably very bad. "Who have you left _not_ unconscious in an alleyway? Can they identify you? This is why I hate siring people, by the way -- they ask all the stupid questions and none of the important ones, like how to properly dispose of a body."

"I didn't leave _anyone_ ," Louis says, and sits on the floor in front of his bed, cross-legged. "I haven't-- you said not to do anything with strangers, so I thought it would--" he shrugs, throwing his hand up and letting it fall back to his knee hard enough to make a sound. "Zayn's ill, I think. He's, like, tired all the time, and it's just. Weird, like, I haven't fed from him in weeks and he's still not feeling great."

"You're on _tour_ and Zayn's _tired_ ," Nick says slowly, "and you think this has something to do with you somehow. How much did you feed from him, last?"

"Not a lot," Louis says. "But that's kind of how we'd been doing it - just bits and pieces, but, like, daily.” He frowns, having lost the plot. “It wasn't like I was feeding from him _normally_ , so I thought it'd be all right--"

Nick interrupts him, saving him from himself. "Let me guess, because you did it while you were fucking?" he says. "Yes, because if there's one thing people who are fucking can keep track of, it's how much of what bodily fluid is exchanged and when."

"I thought I was being careful," Louis snaps. "But it doesn't matter, does it, because I was wrong, and now he's, like. Why isn't he getting better? I just need to know what to do."

"He's tired, you say," Nick prompts him. "He's not collapsed?"

"He staggered a bit one day, but he's been all right since then," Louis scrubs his hand through his hair. "He's-- there's been a weird scent to him, I think."

"How do you mean," Nick asks quietly.

"Like, sour, I think?" Louis tells him. "I thought it was just him being tired at first, but it hasn't gone away, and I don't--"

"Oh, well, jesus," Nick says. "All right, look. Apparently I've given you some terrible advice. I thought I literally spelled out for you why I pick up randoms, but in the same breath I told to you never to pick up randoms, and now you've gone and killed your best mate."

"Say again?" Louis barks, getting up on his knees, his senses that much clearer, vision sharp. He thinks about the last time he saw Zayn, how his heartbeat had sounded regular, but smothered, the tinny echo of it and the shadows below his cheekbones. Zayn had come in his mouth and around his fingers, grip as powerful as ever as he squeezed Louis' shoulder.

"What exactly do you think death smells like, Louis?” Nick asks, pointedly. “A bit sour, don’t you reckon?”

“No,” Louis says weakly, shaking his head, and now it’s like he can’t get the memory of it out of his nostrils, of all the times Zayn was in the room with him and Louis hadn’t realised he’d been dying, slowly. “No, I-- I don’t--”

“Listen, what Zayn needs at this point," Nick tells him, "is an actual blood transfusion. This isn't your garden variety anaemia, Louis; you can't expect him to sleep it off, stuff him up with vitamins and send him on his way."

"But he was _fine_!" Louis argues. "He was-- I always listened to his heart, I would've noticed if he'd got weaker, if he'd--"

Nick cuts him off again. "Once a week you would've noticed," he says, "because there'd be a difference from one week to the next. But a slight difference from one night to the next? Is there a human being alive whose heart doesn't beat a bit stronger when they're coming?"

Louis bites his lip until he feels the skin start to give under the point of his tooth. "He's not really going to die, is he?” he asks. “If he doesn't get a transfusion?"

Nick’s voice takes on a resigned tone and that, somehow, is even worse than the slight condescension he’d been using with Louis before. "Well, what will probably happen is he'll collapse someday soon: on stage or backstage, whichever. You'll rush him to hospital. They'll soon sort out what he needs and he'll get a transfusion then and there and be fine, and if you're _very_ lucky - which you won’t be; I’ve seen the headlines you lot generate - you'll be able to keep the gossip down before The Sun publishes photos of him being carted into an ambulance in a stretcher. Or," he continues, "maybe you can be proactive and take him to some local private surgery in -- where are you now? Amsterdam? -- and get him topped up there."

"Oh, my god," Louis says, and sticks his tongue into the sliver he's torn into his lip, blotting the crawl of blood that seeps out. He wishes he could cry or be sick or something, some recognisable expression of emotion to show how awful everything is. He can’t believe he’d ever thought himself immune from pain and he hates it now, resents his death and this un-life, because Zayn is too important to lose over it.

"There's another option, of course," Nick says off-handedly. "You could let him drink from you."

“No!” Louis gets up and sits back on his bed, then lies down on it, would bury his face in it if it weren’t for Nick. “No, isn’t that how you get turned into a vampire in the first place? I’m not turning him into a vampire. Or, or a half-vampire, or whatever. I’m not _killing_ him. No, the answer’s no.”

“There’s no such thing as a half-vampire, I’ve no idea how you come up with these things,” Nick says. “Listen, Louis. I’m addressing you as a peer, here, blood sucker to blood sucker. And yes, I’ve _killed_ my share of people, fed too much from loads of them, and left loads of them aside. Good people, young, healthy people. People like you. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“I'm a fuckup,” Louis spits out, miserable. “I understand that just fine.”

Nick groans on the line. “I’m not sure how much clearer I could have been that you can't just drink blood from someone indefinitely and expect them to be all right.” He sighs, and there’s a rustle Louis imagines is him mussing his own hair, rubbing at his face with his hands, and then he says, “Look. I’d tell you you have an eternity to get it right, but I know how you boys are, and I know you’ll want to fix this, and you’re probably thinking siring him would be the worst possible thing you could do to him. But if you really do want to help him... tell me, has your life been so awful since the day I sired you?”

“I’ve nearly killed one of my best friends because I couldn’t just...” Louis pushes his knuckles into his bicep and flicks his fringe, frustrated. “ _Like_ him, like a _person_.”

“Oh, stop that,” Nick says. “If I have to spend an eternity listening to you go on about it I’ll lie down in the sun on a tropical island and end it all.”

“Why would you do that when you can just ignore all my texts,” Louis snaps.

Nick continues as though Louis hasn’t said anything. “He’s not going to _die_ , Louis, so if you want him you can have him, either way. You can fuck him until he cries, if you like, just don’t treat him like dessert.

“Oh, and make sure to talk to him about it first,” he mutters. “Apparently, people don’t take very well to being killed without their input.”

**

“Hey,” Zayn already has the start of a soft smile on his face as he opens his door to Louis, pulling him in with a light grip on his arm. Louis continues to hold up his arm after Zayn’s released him, lets Zayn trail his fingers absently over the inside of Louis’ elbow.

“Hello,” Louis says, feeling oddly formal. “I think we need to talk.” He’s been over so many times, in so many hotels now, and they’ve crashed into each other without saying a word, leaving clothes on the ground and saving the conversation for after.

Zayn lets his hand drop and he shrugs, waving his way inside. “All right,” he says.

“You’re still ill,” Louis says, following Zayn in. “But it’s been weeks since I’ve had any of your blood.”

“All of us are tired, Lou,” Zayn tells him, and sits down on his bed. He curls up on it and leans back on his elbows. “You haven’t even got back round to me on the rota, yet. I’ll be fine by then, you’ll see.”

“I know you just think you’re tired, but I can _hear_ your heart, Zayn.” Louis climbs over him and stretches out on his back at an angle next to him. “It’s not all right. You’re not getting better.” He sighs, taking in the faint sour scent still clinging to the air around Zayn; the scent of death, of Zayn dying. “Nick says you’re gonna need a transfusion.”

“A blood transfusion for a bit of anaemia?" Zayn snorts. “Bit extreme, isn’t it?”

“What you’ve got isn’t anaemia,” Louis says. “I’m magical, remember? That would be too easy.” He stares up at the ceiling, folding his hands over his stomach. “We have to stop,” he announces. He’d decided it for himself even before he’d finished talking to Nick.

“Stop... what, exactly? Like, _everything_?" Zayn asks. “Like,” he waves his hand between them. “ _This_?”

Louis shrugs.

“Listen,” Zayn heaves a sigh. “Let's say you’re right. Let's say it’s that bad, that I have to have a transfusion, or whatever. Even after I’m better? Even then?”

“You said I wouldn’t ever actually hurt you,” Louis says, “but I did. I really did.” He turns his head to look at Zayn. “When you get back on the rota and I’m feeding from you again, I’m not gonna want to stop. I’m going to have to force myself to stop _every time_. That’s what monsters do, Zayn.”

“No,” Zayn says. “Monsters don’t care enough to try and stop.”

Louis gives Zayn a sad smile. “You can’t keep me coming all the time, yeah? Who’s to say it’ll always work? Who’s to say one time we do this I don’t lose control of myself and just end up killing you?”

Zayn shrugs. “Nick killed you,” he points out. “That didn’t turn out so bad.”

Louis stares at him. “You know that’s not the same thing,” he warns him, but Zayn simply shrugs again.

“But it started as the same thing, didn’t it? So what if it happened in a night instead of a couple of months. It’s not like I had no idea what I was getting into.” Zayn smiles at Louis and reaches over to pat him on the cheek. “I’ve been reading, you know. I kind of get how this vampire thing works.”

Louis scowls, but doesn’t turn away from the warm touch of Zayn’s hand on his face. “Apparently everybody gets how this vampire thing works except for me,” he says.

“Would it be _that_ bad, really,” Zayn asks him, “considering the only thing making you upset is that we wouldn't be able to do this anymore?" He strokes his thumb over Louis’ cheekbone. “Have you tried asking me? What if I _like_ this? What if I _don’t_ want you to stop next time? Would it get really weird if you, like, sired me?” He frowns, makes a face. “I don’t know what it’s like for you and Nick; I wouldn’t have to obey your every command or anything like that, would I?”

Louis laughs at that. “No,” he says, “no, apparently all Nick has to do as my sire is remind me how much I don’t know about anything.” He puts a hand on his chest. “No obeying on my part.”

“Good,” Zayn nods, “because I plan on being really troublesome.”

“Well, I plan on being really condescending,” Louis shoots back. He bites his lip as he searches Zayn’s face for signs of fear or reservation, afraid for a moment to ask, to make it real, but Zayn’s heart beats steady, secure. Zayn trusts him so much with his life, and now with this. “Do you really want me to do this?”

“I don’t wanna die, exactly,” Zayn shakes his head. He lets his hand fall from Louis’ face to cover his hands on his stomach. “But I don’t wanna stop, either.” 

Louis turns on his side. “What will we tell the boys?” he asks.

“That they’ll be doing double duty on the rota?” Zayn raises his eyebrows. “Well, look. They’ll probably want to make sure we don’t end up turning into an all-vampire boyband, for starters.”

“Although as far as unique selling points go, we could do worse,” Louis agrees. He looks down at their hands, at Zayn’s thumb hooked over the side of Louis’. “We should, er... probably tell them why there’ll be two of us now.”

“Because we wanted to be together,” Zayn says simply. “What else do they need to know?”

“I don’t know,” Louis shrugs, trying to hide his smile. “It sounds awfully romantic.”

“Vampire stuff is always romantic,” Zayn declares. He leans in until Louis can feel Zayn’s breath on his face. “Sharing blood as a substitute for sex--”

“And sometimes as actual sex,” Louis adds.

“Sires and eternal bonds and such,” Zayn goes on, inching closer until he has to tilt his head so that their noses don’t crush against each other, lips touching. “What do I have to do,” he murmurs, and Louis kisses him, pulls his hands free to grab Zayn by the shoulders and tug him close, up and over him. Zayn’s pulse is quicker, nearer now, and even in the shadow Louis can see the artery throb under Zayn’s skin.

“Just this,” Louis pulls away to whisper, fangs letting down, and he buries them deeply into Zayn’s proffered wrist, sucking hard enough to make Zayn whimper. Nick’s told him about this, insisted on telling him over his protests and then sent him a handful of texts and a DM over Twitter saying _if you don’t want to actually kill him, Tomlinson, take fucking note_ , but at first the taste of Zayn is too sweet, too perfect and he can’t believe he gets to have it again, even if it’s only one more time. He eases off a bit after the first few waves of blood, and then Zayn’s getting hard, turning them both on, and Louis drinks through that as well, tipping his hips up to rub against Zayn’s thigh, moving them together slowly.

“‘m starting to get really,” Zayn mumbles, leaning his forehead against Louis’ shoulder. “Like, I could get off like this, if I wasn’t so tired.”

Louis squeezes his arm reassuringly and watches as Zayn’s eyes drift shut, peaceful expression on his face, and when Louis lets his fingers drift to Zayn’s hand, he can feel the warmth sapping from them already. A few moments more and Zayn will lose consciousness, Louis knows; a few beyond that and he’ll be beyond saving. He lifts his fangs out of Zayn’s skin and cups Zayn’s jaw in his palm, turning Zayn’s face up to the light as he cradles Zayn’s head on his other arm.

“Zayn,” he says, and Zayn’s eyelids flutter open, pupils like pinpricks despite the relative dim of the room. “Zayn, you have to drink, all right,” Louis tells him, and lifts his own wrist to his mouth, snagging the skin with his fang to tear it. It doesn’t hurt, barely stings in fact, though the gash is ugly, and it’s odd how his blood just oozes quietly, doesn’t come spurting out the way it does in the movies. No heartbeat, Louis thinks. It makes sense, after a fashion.

Zayn stares at the wound, wide-eyed but with an uneasy expression on his face. “Oh, my god,” he says, his voice thin, barely audible. He swallows hard. “Wow, I really cannot handle seeing other people's blood."

“Are you serious?” Louis asks. “Are you going to be sick on your literal deathbed?”

“Hopefully not,” Zayn says, gulping, and then he laughs, actually laughs, helplessly, weakly, pale-lipped and with dark circles under his eyes. He cranes his neck and puts his mouth over Louis’ wrist and sucks it gently, like he’s kissing it; then he starts to get the hang of it, taking shallow breaths as he pushes his tongue up against it, starts to force the blood out of Louis’ dormant veins.

Zayn hasn’t stopped rubbing his hips in small thrusts against Louis, and Louis wonders for a moment if this is something Zayn can taste, now, if his senses are already improving, or if he’s really too far gone to come. The sensation of Zayn’s lips on his wrist is a bit erotic in and of itself, and Louis thinks the way Zayn’s drinking his blood down, mouth working on him as he regains some colour, is something Louis will remember, later, with his hand around his own cock. Zayn seems to know when he’s had enough, releasing Louis from his grip and letting his head fall back on Louis’ arm, and although he’s just drunk a meal’s worth of blood he seems utterly sapped of energy, healthy-looking at last, gorgeous in slumber but dead to the world. He smells like nothing, like Zayn used to smell, in the increasingly hazy memories Louis has of his prior life.

“Zayn,” Louis calls softly to him, leaning over him to feel the small puffs of his breath, but they’re barely there, now. Zayn’s heart is tired, beats weak and irregular, fluttering and then pausing for longer and longer intervals until Louis tries to tune it out, not wanting to hear the moment it stops entirely. He gets out of bed and makes himself a cup of tea, because even though it doesn’t satisfy him the way it used to, it still hits the emotional cues of comfort and busywork.

Then he settles in to wait until dawn.

**

Zayn awakens at dawn with a squint and a flash of hand to grip at Louis’ torn wrist where he’s stood over him, as though sensing the nearest source of blood. He recovers quickly enough and blinks up at Louis with a small smile. “Hi,” he croaks. His lips are cracking and his eyes are going into slits in the natural light of the room, but he’s got a new life and a new smell and in place of his heartbeat and the flow of his breath, Louis can sense the sharp, pure hunger in him, feels himself respond to the echo of it.

“Hello there,” Louis says, sitting down on the edge of the bed, and pushes his bottle of blood into Zayn’s grasp, holding it steady for him as Zayn’s mouth opens around rapidly descending fangs. He watches Zayn drink and get stronger before his eyes, lets his fangs down sympathetically and longs for this, that first moment when he tasted blood and loved it.

“My god, this is amazing,” Zayn says when he’s managed to tear the bottle from his mouth, peering down into it with one eye.

“Isn’t it,” Louis grins back at him.

Zayn licks his lips and bobs his head agreeably, pushing himself to sit up. He pins his lip with the point of one of his fangs and gives Louis a fond look that’s almost hopeful. “So, not that different,” he suggests.

Louis turns and crawls over Zayn to lie down next to him, placing a hand on his heart, where it no longer beats. Zayn puts his hand on top of Louis’, and Louis shakes his head. “Basically," he says, “we’re exactly the same.”

 

end.

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to [disarm_d](http://archiveofourown.org/users/disarm_d), who said "write vampire fic!" and then patiently held my hand through all of this. Thanks also to [lazy_daze](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lazy_daze) for the incredible Britpick, and to aliferuined, cantgetnoworse, checkthemargins, flimsy, and theprincessed for the moral support along the way!
> 
>  
> 
> [Tumblr](http://randominitea.tumblr.com) | [LJ](http://randominity.livejournal.com)


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